


Lonely in Conflict, Cast as a Convict

by andthenshesaid-write (ladyknight1512)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Blood, Blood Drinking, Cornelia is the MVP, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fathers with high expectations, Feelings of Inadequacy, Grief/Mourning, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Murder, Sarcasm, Sibling Rivalry, Snark, Temporary Character Death, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Turning, Vampires, Violence, coffee dates, family bonds, halloween party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 43,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25481965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknight1512/pseuds/andthenshesaid-write
Summary: Dan is a vampire who can’t remember how it feels not to be lonely. Phil is a vampire hunter living in his brother’s shadow.When they meet, they find acceptance in each other that they don’t find anywhere else, but there are secrets and other forces at play trying to keep them apart.
Relationships: Cornelia Dahlgren/Martyn Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 31
Kudos: 48
Collections: Phandom Reverse Bang 2020





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the [phandomreversebang](https://phandomreversebang.tumblr.com/) and was inspired by the amazing art by [nebulaearecool](https://nebulaearecool.tumblr.com/), which you can see [here](https://nebulaearecool.tumblr.com/post/624510589717364736/here-is-this-art-again-for-the).
> 
> Thank you to my two betas, [thoughtathought](https://thoughtathought.tumblr.com/), who has been a very enthusiastic cheerleader and happily served as my “blind” reader, and [quicksilvermaid](https://quicksilvermaid.tumblr.com/), who let me bounce ideas off her and tirelessly addressed my concerns and questions, even though this isn’t even her fandom.
> 
> The title of this fic is taken from the song [The Breach by Lazy Habits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s8MXBuxS48).

It had been a long time since the night wasn’t lonely. It was ironic, because there were more people out at night now than there were two centuries ago, but Dan had found that the more people were around, the less anyone paid attention. In a way it made things easier for him. In a city as big as London he could be just one more guy in the crowd, even at night. His perpetually boyish face and dimpled smile gave him an immunity to suspicion. Most of the people he hunted never even saw him coming.

That evening, a Saturday in mid-October, Dan wasn’t looking for his next meal; he’d eaten the night before and it was enough to keep him going for a few days at least. He darted around the groups of women tottering in their too-high heels and edged past the men stumbling drunk out of a pub. If he’d been human, he would have been gasping for breath by the time he stopped outside the Japanese restaurant tucked between a bakery and a dry-cleaner. Instead, he took a moment to fix his hair in the reflection of the window and then stepped inside, ducking his head to avoid banging it on the door frame.

His eyes caught on Phil across the room the moment he crossed the threshold. It would have been noteworthy except that Phil was easily the tallest person in the room, other than Dan himself, and he’d just spilled water all over the front of his red-checked shirt while taking a drink. Dan grabbed some extra napkins and slipped between the tables until he could drop into the chair opposite Phil.

“Looks like you could use these.” He held the napkins out to Phil, who took them absentmindedly and dabbed at the water stains.

“Thanks.” Phil looked up and met Dan’s eyes, a small smile quirking up his mouth. “Nice of you to finally show up.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “I’m not that late.”

Phil huffed a laugh, giving up on his shirt and dropping the napkins on the table. “Any later and we’d be having breakfast instead of dinner.”

They each grabbed a menu from the end of the table and debated their options until ultimately deciding to just get a sushi platter to share.

“So how are your parents?” Dan tapped a chopstick against his palm. “You said last week that you were going up north to see them?”

Phil nodded and his eyes brightened. “They’re good. Busy, but they always make time to see me and my brother.”

“What do they do again?”

Phil shrugged, one of those shrugs that indicated he didn’t really know or care about the details. “They run an organisation. What do your parents do?”

“Oh, I haven’t spoken to my family in years. We never really got along.”

It wasn’t a lie exactly. His family had been dead for about 250 years, so it was true that he hadn’t spoken to them in a while. But Phil didn’t need to know any of that. In fact, it was probably better for him if he didn’t.

If Dan were less selfish, he would have nipped any potential friendship with Phil in the bud before it had a chance to take hold. Friendships between vampires and humans never went well. The human was inevitably put in danger or, if not, the vampire would eventually have to end the friendship before the human could start noticing that only one of them was aging. But there was something about Phil that had knocked down his walls. 

They’d met at a coffee shop about a month ago when they’d both reached for the sugar packets at the end of the counter and had one of those mini-arguments of politeness about who should go first. They might have stood there all day if not for the teenage girl who’d shouldered her way between them when she got tired of waiting for them to make up their minds. They’d laughed and, when Phil had asked if Dan wanted to join him to drink their coffee in a nearby park and watch the ducks, Dan hadn’t been able to think of a reason to say no. And when Dan had left a couple of hours later, because he could feel the sun starting to prick at his face and hands, they’d exchanged phone numbers and that had been that. They’d been talking every other day since and met up a few times before Phil had had to go visit his parents.

“Did you have a falling out?” Phil asked.

In anyone else it might have been a rude question, but Phil’s face was so open and non-judgemental. He also seemed to just be naturally curious about everything. Half their conversations up to that point had Phil wondering about whatever caught his attention, be that something about Dan, where thunder came from or if the squirrels in the park got cold at night.

“Sort of. They didn’t agree with my... lifestyle.”

Phil’s smile softened. He would assume Dan was gay, which was fine, because he was. It would never occur to Phil that Dan was a vampire.

Their conversation was put on hold by the arrival of their food. Phil had grabbed a fork even before the platter was settled on the table. As soon as the waiter had turned her back, Phil speared one of the nigiri and dropped the whole thing in his mouth.

Dan eyed the platter to consider his choices. Most of the other vampires he knew would roll their eyes if they could see him now. Vampires didn’t need to eat—human blood was enough to sustain them—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t. Most of them stopped because they didn’t see the point if it wasn’t necessary, but over time it often became a form of snobbery. Eating was something humans did and vampires were clearly superior, therefore they shouldn’t sully themselves with the practice.

Dan didn’t abide by that. Food was fun, and there were so many more different varieties now than there had been even just 50 years ago! Plus, he was 225 years old; he had to get his kicks somewhere.

Phil eyed the casual way Dan handled his chopsticks to pick up a piece of sashimi. “I should have known you’d be a chopstick aficionado.”

Dan grinned and bit the sashimi clean in half. “What can I say? I’m a man of many talents.”

* * *

Phil couldn’t wait to get home and shower. He always felt that way after meeting with Dan, like he could feel the vampirism crawling across his skin. He shuddered violently and, when the woman standing next to him on the street corner eyed him warily, he wrapped his coat tighter around himself, as if he were cold.

When he’d decided a couple of months ago to track down and befriend a vampire, he hadn’t expected it to involve so much subterfuge. Sure, he’d known he would have to pretend to be this vampire’s friend, but he hadn’t expected so many phone calls and dinner catch-ups. He was talking to Dan more than he was talking to Martyn most days.

That night had been especially hard. Watching Dan eating sushi opposite him like it was nothing, when he’d probably drained an innocent person dry in the last couple of days, had made Phil’s stomach roll. But it would be worth it when Dan trusted him enough to take him to the leader of his clan, or at least let him close enough that Phil could snoop around and figure out who the leader was and where he or she lived. What a coup it would be if Phil was the one to take down the leader of the largest vampire clan in the south of England, and with him, all the vampires they’d ever sired. Phil could play the long game with that as the prize.

The pedestrian light went green and Phil hurried across the road, eyes already set on his apartment building just up the road. His phone rang just as he was pushing the door open and starting up the stairs to his door on the second floor.

“Hey, Martyn,” he said, fumbling his keys out of his pocket.

“Hey.” Something thumped on the other end of the line. “Are you coming out tonight?”

Phil jiggled the doorknob and shouldered his door open. “Yeah, I just have to change. I was out for dinner with someone.”

The silence emanating from his brother was so thick it had a physical presence. “Since when do you have friends, let alone people you have dinner with? And don’t say me and Cornelia. You know we don’t count.”

Phil huffed a sigh away from the speaker and flipped on the light in his bedroom so he wouldn’t trip over his discarded clothes on his way to the wardrobe. “He’s just someone I met while getting coffee a few weeks ago. It’s not important. Do you and Cornelia need me for back-up tonight, or can I go solo?”

“We got a tip that there’s a group of about five of them in a flat out on Rowley Way. We could use an extra pair of hands.”

“Alright. I’ll meet you there.”

They hung up without a goodbye, but there didn’t seem to be a need for one—their night was only just beginning after all.

Phil popped out the false bottom of his wardrobe and dragged out the wooden case hidden inside. He flipped it open and ran his fingers lightly over the five wooden stakes lined up neatly on the right. Martyn and Cornelia would be with him, so he drew out only two, and then grabbed the sheathed silver dagger and the thick silver chain.

The black jeans he was already wearing would do, but he swapped his button-up for a black t-shirt and toed out of his sneakers to pull on a pair of black boots. Black wasn’t really his colour—it made his skin look so pale he might have been a vampire himself—and the vampires could see better in the dark than humans could anyway, but there was no reason to make it easier for them to know he was coming.

He wrapped the silver chain around his hips like some kind of belt he wasn’t cool enough to wear, and then slipped on the harness that kept the stakes strapped to the small of his back and the sheath of the dagger to his waist. Then he threw a black bomber jacket over the top to hide the weapons from view. The whole process from opening his front door had taken less than ten minutes. Not a personal best. He could do better.

On the street, groups parted and people stepped out of his way as he approached. He had always been taller than most people but he’d never thought of himself as imposing. Dan could probably part a crowd like a knife through butter. People would shy away from the unnamed danger they could sense in him.

He made good time through the city and, when he arrived at the western end of Rowley Way, Martyn and Cornelia were leaning up against a wall, waiting for him. They were similarly dressed all in black, but they looked more natural in it than Phil did, stood taller. He’d always thought so, as if vampire hunting was something they actually _did_ while it was something he just played at. The thought was punctuated by the sight of the gun at Martyn’s hip, half-hidden under his jacket. Phil preferred the hand-to-hand of stakes and daggers, but Martyn liked to have the option.

Cornelia greeted him with a grin and a hug. “Martyn told me you made a friend!”

Phil had to bend almost in half to hug her back. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t think it’s going to last.”

“Not with that attitude.” Martyn pushed himself away from the wall and jerked his head that they should follow him. “Come on. The flat we want is about halfway up.”

The estate was a brutalist monument to the 60s and 70s, all staggered concrete slabs. Yellow light shone around the edges of closed curtains in a few of the windows and a TV blared from inside one of the nearby flats. From another, a woman was yelling and a baby was crying. A young man in winged trainers and a snapback eyed them as they turned to head up a set of stairs to the second level, but he didn’t stop them or ask why they were there.

Martyn pressed a finger to his lips as they approached a door that looked like someone had tried to kick it in. There was music playing inside, but it wasn’t loud enough for Phil to make out what song it was. He positioned himself behind Cornelia, who stood close behind Martyn, and clenched and unclenched his fists to ward the chill off his fingers. Martyn hammered on the door and it felt like they were hanging in one weightless moment until the locks turned, the door creaked open and Martyn forced his way inside. Cornelia slipped in next and Phil brought up the rear, slamming the door shut behind them to stop anyone peering in.

Two of the vampires had already rushed Martyn, but he was holding them off with a stake in each hand. Cornelia had claimed one of the other vampires for herself, which left Phil with two of his own. He grabbed a stake with one hand and his dagger with the other, and ducked the grasping hands of the first vampire to reach him, a tall, older man with a crooked nose. He stabbed the vampire in the stomach with his dagger. Blood welled and the vampire hissed, and Phil took the chance to spin around and kick his second vampire in the stomach before she could jump onto his back.

There was a gurgling groan from the other side of the room and Phil glanced up to see one of Martyn’s vampires turn an ashy grey and slump to the floor with a stake in his heart. First kill to Martyn then. No surprise there.

The female Phil was fighting leapt towards him and grabbed his right wrist to keep the stake from touching her. Her hand tightened and the bones ground under his skin. He bashed her in the temple with the hilt of his dagger to stun her and then slashed the knife across her throat, making sure to dig into her carotid artery. She let him go and clasped at her throat, as if she could hold the blood in with her bare hands. Phil grabbed her shoulder and pulled her in towards him as he drove the stake towards her chest, felt it pierce her skin and slide up under her ribs. He knew he’d found her heart when she went grey and slumped to the ground.

A solid weight tackled him from behind and drove him to the ground—the other vampire. He’d recovered from his stomach wound faster than Phil had expected. He didn’t have a chance to retrieve his stake before they went down and his dagger flew from his hand.

Phil bucked under the vampire, trying to throw him off, or at least make enough room between them so that he could roll over. He jabbed an elbow back into the vampire’s stomach, felt it connect with the wet wound he’d left earlier and the vampire growled in his ear. Phil gagged at the smell of his breath, like dirty, old coins, and thrashed when the vampire’s fingers curled into his hair to pull his head to the side. The vampire’s teeth bit through his coat and deep into his right shoulder. Phil hissed at the sharp pain and then gasped when the vampire ripped his teeth away.

“Hey!” Cornelia yelled from somewhere behind him and then the vampire was yanked back enough that Phil could wriggle out from under him and push to his feet.

He had to stifle a laugh when he turned around. Cornelia had wrapped her chain around the vampire’s neck from behind and pulled, but even on his knees the vampire was as tall as Cornelia was standing. The muscles in her arms strained as the vampire tried to pull the chain away, but his hands blistered and burned every time he tried to get a good grip on the silver.

“Any day now, Phil,” Cornelia said.

He grabbed the second stake from the harness on his back, dodged the hands that the vampire flailed out to grab him and forced the stake into his heart. Cornelia loosened her grip on the chain as he died and let the vampire slip to the floor.

Their breathing was loud in the sudden quiet, broken only by the speaker on a nearby table that was playing some hip hop song Phil didn’t know. The bodies of the five vampires littered the floor and Martyn had disappeared, but there were footsteps filtering down from the second level, so he must have gone up to check that there weren’t any others lying in wait.

“Good work, Phil.” Cornelia limped over to give him a high-five.

He frowned. “Are you hurt?”

She grimaced. “Just a sprained ankle, I think. I’ll ice it when we get home. It’ll be fine in a few days. What about you? That vampire got you good.”

His shoulder throbbed in response, the pain building now that the adrenaline was wearing off. “He bit me but I don’t think he did too much damage. I’ll disinfect it when I get home. I’m more annoyed about the holes he left in my coat—this is my favourite one.”

Martyn clomped down the stairs and turned off the speaker on his way over to them. “All clear.”

“Do you think there are any more based here?” Phil bent to retrieve his dagger, wiping the blood on the shirt of the vampire he’d just killed before sliding it into its sheath. The stakes would have to stay in their hearts until the bodies could be destroyed.

Martyn shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. Help me get the bodies upstairs—the bedroom will get some sun during the day. Hopefully that’ll take care of them before the clean-up crew shows up.” 

Vampires had varying levels of tolerance to sunlight, determined by how long it had been since they’d last fed. A vampire with fresh blood in their system could stay in the sun for a few hours before they started feeling a burn, but if they got trapped in the sun they’d eventually disintegrate into dust. There wasn’t any way to know when these vampires had last fed, but with stakes in their hearts they wouldn’t be going anywhere. With a bit of luck, they’d be dust by the time the clean-up crew arrived to dispose of the bodies tomorrow.

Together, Phil and Martyn carried each of the vampires upstairs into the bedroom and lined them up on the worn carpet and the rumpled bed shoved in the corner. The window faced north so Martyn pulled the curtains wide to allow as much sunlight in as possible. Luckily, none of the balconies were connected so no one would be able to see the bodies inside.

With that done, Cornelia stole a set of keys from the hook by the door and then the three of them left the flat, locking it behind them. Martyn offered Cornelia his elbow as a brace while she limped down the stairs.

“You off to find more trouble?” Martyn asked, when they paused on the street.

Phil shook his head. “I only brought two stakes with me.” 

He wasn’t going to mention his injured shoulder. If Martyn hadn’t noticed it, Phil wasn’t going to call his attention to it. He wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about being more careful, as if Phil had just stood back and offered up his flesh for gnawing on.

“You should always be prepared for the worst, Phil. What if there had been more than five of them?”

Phil pursed his lips, confident that Martyn couldn’t see it in the dark. “This was your fight. I was only here for back-up, remember?”

“Now, boys,” Cornelia said, “don’t fight.”

Martyn sighed. “Fine. Can you see Cornelia home, then? I’ve got to drop off the keys at HQ and then I might go see what else I can find.”

“I’m perfectly capable of getting home on my own,” Cornelia grumbled.

“I know, but your ankle’s hurt and vampires aren’t the only things out there trying to hurt you.”

“Phil’s flat is in completely the opposite direction!”

Phil waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I could use the walk.”

He would have walked her home anyway, but his reassurances were true. His blood always felt like it was on fire after a fight and going straight home to bed wasn’t going to help. At least if he had to walk halfway across London and back again he might burn off some excess energy.

Maybe Cornelia was tired because she didn’t put up any more of a fight. Phil turned his head and tried to ignore their murmurs as she and Martyn pecked each other on the lips and whispered instructions to be careful and not do anything stupid. What must it be like to have some he loved constantly in danger like that? How would he sleep at night knowing they might be getting into a fight they wouldn’t make it out of alive?

Phil jumped when Cornelia’s hand curled around his bicep and she smiled tightly up at him, a sign that her ankle was paining her more than she was letting on. Martyn was already a dark shape walking away from them.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded. “When you are.”

* * *

A lot of vampires were very ceremonial about dawn. Although most of them could still go out during the day, especially during the cooler months when it was so often overcast, the rising sun still felt like a barrier between them and the rest of the world.

Dan used to feel that way. He would stay up and watch the sunrise, bitterness clawing through him when faced with this symbol that he no longer belonged, was no longer “normal”.

But that was a long time ago; he had tried to tone down the dramatic melancholia since then.

He leaned against the edge of the sliding door that opened onto his balcony and yawned. After his dinner with Phil, he’d returned home and spent most of the night browsing the internet. Technology really was amazing and very convenient for vampire life: if he didn’t have time to feed and go out for something he wanted or needed, he could just buy it online and have it delivered the very next day. Truly, a modern marvel.

The early morning sun sliced across the balcony and landed on Dan’s arm and face. Within minutes, the skin on his cheek prickled with burning and he backed inside. He was older, which meant that he needed to feed more regularly if he wanted to be out during the day, and it had been almost 48 hours since his last meal. His last “real” meal. Sushi with Phil obviously didn’t count.

He dashed through the sunlight to draw the heavy blackout curtains. As he did, the buzzer sounded from by the front door, indicating that someone was downstairs. He rolled his eyes but pushed the button to let them in. There was only one person who bothered to visit at all, let alone so early in the morning, so he wasn’t surprised when Ava walked into the flat a few minutes later.

“Do you remember,” he said, “when I said you should only come here if there’s an emergency?”

“You also said you like burnt popcorn so I don’t think your judgement can be trusted.” 

“This from the woman who used to eat haggis.”

That was actually how they’d met. He’d taken a trip up to Edinburgh about eighteen months before and met her in a pub, where she’d been complaining about the chef’s poor quality haggis. He’d loved her soft Scottish brogue, but mostly couldn’t get past how much she looked like a stereotypical vampire, with her pale skin, big dark eyes, bright red lips and long black hair that wouldn’t have been out of place in a shampoo commercial. He’d been travelling alone and could have used some company, so he’d struck up a conversation and turned her that very night. She’d told him later it was a stupid and impulsive thing to do, and she was right, but he hadn’t become the leader of the largest clan of vampires in southern England by playing it safe. Of course, he hadn’t planned on doing that either, so maybe he shouldn’t put so much stock in it.

Ava perked an unimpressed eyebrow. “You’ve got to let that go. Besides, I _am_ here about an emergency.”

He waved a careless hand because there was no stopping her once she got on a roll. He wished he’d known that before he decided to turn her. “Go on then.”

“David and his lot were killed by a group of hunters last night, down on Rowley Way.”

They lingered in an expectant silence until eventually Dan shrugged. “Okay…?”

“Aren’t you going to do something?”

Dan threw his hands up. “What do you want me to do? They’re already dead!”

“You could at least pretend to care. _You_ created them.”

“I didn’t tell them to go out and get killed, though, did I?”

She scoffed and folded her arms over her chest. “If you kept a tighter leash on your clan, they wouldn’t go off on their own and get killed in the first place!”

“I gave them eternal life. It’s not my place to tell them what to do with it.”

The slow, deep breath she let out whistled between her teeth. “That’s the problem with you, Dan,” she said, her voice tight. “You don’t take any responsibility. You’ve spent the last 200 years traipsing around the world, turning whoever you want into vampires when you get bored, and then when they realise you’re not actually interested in them you just let them wander off.”

“I don’t do it because I get bored!”

“No, you do it because you’re lonely and then you abandon them to loneliness as well, which is even worse.”

When she put it like that, it did sound like a pretty shitty thing to do. But it was a bit late for regret. What was done, was done. Once you were a vampire, there was no turning back. There was nothing he could say to defend himself.

“Even if I put the word out telling them to be more careful, there’s nothing to make them actually listen to me.”

“At least they would know that you care!”

“But I _don’t_ care, Ava. If they insist on drawing attention to themselves and letting the hunters get to them, that’s on them, not me.”

She dropped her face into her hands and her fingers tightened on her hairline. He was pretty sure she wanted to strangle him, not that it would do much good. Strangulation didn’t kill vampires, and even if it did, killing a vampire also killed all the vampires that one had created. If she killed him, she was signing her own death sentence. It was probably the only reason no one in his clan had had a go at him themselves, despite their frustration and anger towards him.

He headed off down the hall towards his bedroom. “I need to sleep.”

She looked like she wanted to continue arguing with him, but then her shoulders slumped as she gave it up. “I’m taking the spare bedroom. I haven’t fed in a few days.”

He waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate that he’d heard her and then closed the door to his bedroom behind him. The room was dark and cool, all black with silver accents. Modern vampire chic he’d often joked. No blood red velvet here. Maybe he would have gone in for all of that if he were a better vampire. Ava was a great vampire; she would have made a great clan leader. She still could be, if she broke away from him and started creating vampires of her own. She was loyal to him though, mostly out of stubborness, he thought. She was more interested in being the one who stuck with him the longest than striking out on her own. Plus, he suspected she thought he needed looking after.

Maybe he did.

Dan pulled his t-shirt over his head and stripped out of his jeans, throwing them both in the laundry basket before stepping into a pair of sweatpants and climbing into bed. As usual, his thoughts turned to Phil.

Should he text him in the afternoon, when he woke up? They’d only had dinner that night before and he didn’t want to seem too eager. But it had been a long time since he’d had a human friend. If he could stand them, he usually turned them into vampires pretty soon after they’d met. Maybe that was why he’d never found anyone he liked enough to keep around. After all, most people didn’t go off and marry someone after knowing them for a day; why shouldn’t the rule be the same for vampires? Not that he was going to marry Phil. That would raise a lot of awkward questions.

He yawned again and turned onto his side, punching his pillow into a comfortable shape. There would be time to think about it later. For now, he needed to sleep.

* * *

Dan was woken hours later by his phone on his bedside table buzzing insistently. Still half-asleep, he flailed a hand out towards it and managed to grab it before he knocked it onto the floor.

“‘Lo?”

“Dan?” Phil said. “Are you asleep? At... three in the afternoon?”

Dan sat up and wiped a hand down his face. “No! Well, yes... I was napping.”

Phil hummed down the phone, a sound that indicated he didn’t believe him. “I called to ask if you want to get coffee?”

“Right now?”

“Unless you have other plans?”

Dan untangled the blankets from around his legs and stumbled to the window, where he peeked gingerly around the edge of a curtain. The sky was heavy with clouds that promised rain. Perfect.

“Sure,” he said, pulling open his chest of drawers to find a clean pair of jeans. “The usual place? I can be there in half an hour.”

“I’ll expect you in forty-five minutes then. See you soon!”

Dan rolled his eyes and chucked his phone onto his bed, then grabbed his clothes and went to rush through a shower. He was going to be early, just so he could rub it in Phil’s face.

He was out of the shower and dressed within ten minutes, grabbed his keys and his phone and was just about to run out the door when Ava poked her head out of the spare bedroom, rubbing her eyes with a fist.

“Are you going somewhere?”

He turned on his heel to face her. “Is that not allowed?”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“It’s cloudy. Looks like rain. I’ll be fine.”

Ava propped herself on the door jamb. “You’ve been acting really strange lately. Stranger than usual, I mean. Is something going on?”

One of his legs bounced with the urge to get out the door. He could feel his lead slipping away with every passing second. Ava wouldn’t let this go, though. He needed to tell her something just to get her off his back.

“Nothing’s going on. I just made a new friend, that’s all.”

“Oh god.” She straightened, like she was getting ready to deliver a lecture.

He waved her off. “It’s fine. I’m not going to turn him. I promise.”

She looked dubious. “Really?”

“Yes! I’ve known him for weeks and he’s still human!” Dan deliberately left out that Phil had gone up north to visit his parents for a couple of weeks and thereby removed himself from the danger of vampirism. She didn’t need to know that part.

“And how long are you going to let this go on for? You know the more you’re in his life, the harder it’s going to be to get out of it.”

Dan grimaced. She wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already thought himself, but knowing something and having Ava point it out to him were two different things.

“You’re the one who’s always telling me I need to be more connected,” he said.

“To other vampires in the clan! Not some random human you bumped into on the street!”

“Actually we met in a coffee shop.”

She rolled her eyes so hard they looked like they were about to pop out of her skull. “Whatever. It’s your problem. Good luck to you.”

She shut the door and he banged on it with a fist before yelling, “Make sure you lock up when you leave!”

Something thumped into the door from the other side—possibly a shoe—but there was no other response, so Dan gave up on her and left the flat. The street was crowded with kids from a nearby school that had just let out for the day, clumped together in oblivious groups that all teenagers seemed to travel in. He edged around them and hurried up the street. He put on an extra burst of speed when the coffee shop was in sight and stopped just inside the door to scan the room—no Phil. A grin split his face and then he jumped when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

Dan spun to see Phil, who had come into the shop just behind him. “Ha! I was early for once!”

Phil pulled his phone out of his coat pocket to check the time and then looked up at him with an apologetic shrug. “Actually you’re right on time, but I know how hard that is for you, so well done.”

“I would have been early,” Dan grumbled as they joined the back of the queue, “but I got held up at home.”

“Doing what? Squeezing into those jeans?”

Dan scoffed. “Do I look like an amateur to you? No, I had someone over.”

Phil turned to look at him. “‘Someone’?”

“Yeah, okay, go on. Make your joke about how you thought I didn’t talk to other people. I’ll wait.”

Phil huffed a laugh. “Well now I won’t bother.” They moved forwards. “Who’s this person then? Have you known them long?”

“Her name’s Ava. We met about a year and a half ago.”

Phil was silent for a long moment and then said, “Girlfriend?”

Dan laughed so suddenly he choked on a breath and the woman standing in front of them glanced back at him in alarm.

“No,” Dan said, once he’d cleared his throat. “I, ah, play for the other team.”

“Oh,” Phil said. “Me too.”

They shared a smile and then waited in silence until it was their turn to order. When they’d collected their drinks, they settled themselves at an empty table in the corner of the shop, as far away from the group of teenage girls sitting in the window as they could get. Still, there was no escaping the shrieks of laughter and explosion of noise as they all tried to talk over each other.

“I wasn’t that loud when I was their age,” Dan said.

“You probably were.” Phil broke the cookie he’d ordered with his coffee in half and dunked one end into his drink. “You just don’t remember it.”

Dan hadn’t been a teenager since the early 1800s—the word hadn’t even existed then—so Phil was probably right, but all Dan could remember from that time was grime. It seemed to be all over the two tiny rooms he’d shared with his parents and his younger brother: one where they’d all slept and the other where they ate and his mother had done whatever work she could get mending clothes. His father hadn’t been around much. Occasionally he’d stumble through the door, reeking of ale and the docks where he tried to find work every morning. If they were lucky he’d leave them the couple of shillings that he hadn’t drunk away when he left again.

Dan pushed the memories away and his gaze caught on Phil’s right wrist as he struggled out of his coat, now that he’d warmed up in the heat of the shop.

“Is that a bruise?” Dan said, eyeing the ring of blue and what looked like finger marks.

Phil glanced at his wrist and then pulled the sleeve of his jumper down to cover it. “It’s nothing.”

“Way to be subtle, Phil. What happened? Are you okay?”

His mind was already filling with possibilities about who had hurt Phil like that and why. They were shortly followed by thoughts about how he could find out who’d done it and how he could make sure it never happened again. Sure, Phil was so pale he was almost translucent, but marks like that came from people who were trying to hurt you.

“It’s really nothing. I just got into a thing with my brother last night. It was an accident.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed as he tried to read Phil’s face. He was obviously lying, but about what Dan couldn’t say, and pestering him about it probably wasn’t going to help.

“Alright,” he eventually said, “but you know you can call me if you need anything.”

That seemed to startle Phil. He stilled and then glanced up, wearing an expression Dan couldn’t identify. Dan tried to make his smile reassuring, but it was probably offset by the way he nervously fiddled with the torn sugar packets between them. He forgot sometimes that the concept of time was different for him than it was for most people. What was one month of friendship when weighed against more than 200 years of existence? But Phil probably thought it was weird, to make an offer like that when they hadn’t met that long ago, and he probably had other friends he could call when he needed help anyway.

“So what were you like as a teenager then?” Dan asked, so they wouldn’t get stuck in that awkward moment.

Phil grimaced and sipped his coffee. “Quiet. Shy. I bred hamsters.”

Dan’s laugh was short and disbelieving. “What? Really?”

Phil nodded. “I sold them to kids at school.”

“Behind the gym?” He deepened his voice. “Phil Lester: Hamster Dealer.”

Phil rolled his eyes but a smile softened his face. “Make fun all you want, but I had a good thing going. I made a bunch of extra money.”

“Your parents didn’t care that you’d set up a hamster boudoir in your bedroom?”

“I mean... they probably thought it was a bit weird, but they appreciated my initiative.”

The corner of Dan’s mouth twitched into a smile. It was easy to imagine a younger Phil being too invested in his hamsters’ breeding schedules, naming all the babies and then selling them off. It gave off mad scientist vibes, but softer.

Phil was so completely removed from Dan’s vampire life that it was almost a relief. Phil had normal, everyday problems. He never had to worry about getting caught feeding or running into a hunter. With Phil, Dan didn’t have to think about the clan he was supposed to be leading, or Ava’s disappointment, or how he’d wound up there in the first place. He could just drink his coffee in peace and talk about hamster breeding.

They passed the rest of the afternoon with a conversation that meandered from their families, to video games, to movies, to countries they’d always wanted to visit. The shop gradually emptied but they only stood to leave when the woman behind the counter started aggressively wiping down the machines.

Phil winced when he shrugged back into his coat, but Dan didn’t ask about it. Maybe he’d pulled a muscle doing whatever he’d been doing with his brother. Did they do some kind of mixed martial arts or something? It didn’t seem like Phil’s kind of thing, but surely you’d end up with bruises and sore muscles with a hobby like that.

As they stepped out of the shop, Phil said, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Dan tried to tamp down his grin. “Sure. Coffee again?”

“I was thinking pizza? I could come to your flat and we could order in?”

Dan went still, that kind of stillness only vampires could achieve. His mind raced, first at the thought of Phil in his space at all, and then trying to remember if there was anything there that might scream “vampire” to an outsider. But that was ridiculous. As far as Phil knew, vampires belonged in movies and books; they didn’t actually exist. Even if he did find something weird, Dan could probably explain it away. His stomach fluttered. It had been a long time since he’d had a human in his space, but this was a thing people did. Friends went over to each other’s houses. They hung out. Saying no once might be acceptable, but the more he put Phil off without a good excuse, the more suspicious Phil would get. Ava would say it was a perfect way to extract himself from Phil’s life... but Dan didn’t want to do that. He liked Phil, like his company and his stupid jokes, and that goofy grin he let out when Dan said something clever or funny.

Dan nodded, hoping it looked smoother than it felt. “Yeah, okay. I’ll text you my address.”

“Great! See you tomorrow!”

Phil departed with a wave and Dan turned back towards his flat until he was sure Phil was out of sight, then he crossed the road and headed towards the city centre. He had needed to feed anyway, but with the promise of Phil at his flat, just the two of them, it was more important than ever. It wasn’t like he was going to snap and drain Phil dry—he had more self-control than that—but there was no reason to torture himself with the temptation.

Sunset was still a couple of hours away, but the cloud cover was so heavy that the streetlights had already come on and pockets of darkness were growing in each of the alleyways that Dan passed. His gaze slid over the crowd around him, most of them tired and trudging home after a day at work, or off to have dinner or drinks with friends or co-workers. Some vampires were picky about who they fed from; some women said it was easier to trick a man into following them out to a secluded area, and some men just preferred to feed from women. Dan didn’t have a preference. His only condition was that they be young enough that the blood loss probably wouldn’t cause the person any long-term harm.

His eyes caught on a man, probably a few years older than Dan was supposed to be, stepping out of a Tesco carrying a microwave ready-meal for one. His slumped shoulders and the bags under his eyes said he’d had another long day in what had probably been a long week; the microwave meal said he was on his way home and lived alone. Dan couldn’t have asked for a more ideal target.

Dan faded into the crowd behind the man and to the left, and matched his pace to the man’s. There were too many people around for Dan to make a move, but he was patient. As long as he didn’t draw attention to himself, he could follow the man all the way home if he needed to.

The man turned into Hyde Park and Dan’s mouth quirked into a smile. It was almost too easy.

Dan backed off a little, not wanting to draw too much attention to himself now they were off the crowded street, but it didn’t seem to matter. The man wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings, walking in that absentminded shambling way of someone who took the same route to and from work every day, year in and year out.

Hunting men was easier, Dan conceded. Most women wouldn’t risk walking alone through a park in the dark and if they did, they knew what precautions to take.

The man was heading towards a dense patch of trees and the number of people in the immediate area had lessened. Dan stepped lightly but picked up his pace until he was at the man’s shoulder. Maybe some sense of danger went off in him, because the man tensed and was just turning to look over his shoulder when Dan clasped a hand over his mouth and wrapped his other arm around the man’s torso and propelled him into the trees.

The man thrashed. He was a couple of inches shorter than Dan, but more heavily muscled. It might have been enough to fight Dan off, if not for the fact that Dan was a vampire and a struggling human had about as much hope of getting away as a mouse from a cat.

“There’s no need to make such a fuss,” Dan said, his voice thick around the fangs that had dropped from his gums. “This won’t take long and you won’t remember anything in the morning.”

The man’s scent, heavy with fear, spiked the air. Dan swallowed hard, his throat aching and parched. With the hand still muffling the man’s yells, Dan yanked his head backwards onto his shoulder to bare the column of his throat and bit down into his flesh. 

The man went limp as he slid into unconsciousness and Dan hefted his weight to hold him up as he sucked hard. The blood flooded his mouth, hot and salty, and Dan groaned. He’d seen and done a lot in 200 years but there was nothing, no feeling, no experience, that could rival this. It was a sweeter relief than a cold glass of water on a hot day, more satisfying than the best fuck he’d ever had. If he’d known that it would be like this, when he was first turned, maybe he wouldn’t have been so scared.

He pulled back with a gasp. He always forgot how muted the world became when he hadn’t fed for a few days. Now it was like a light had been turned on in a dark room. The trees around him were clearer and the copper smell of the blood lingered heavy in his nose. The cars on the distant street sounded so close he thought he might turn and find them right behind him.

Thin rivulets of blood trailed from the twin puncture wounds in the man’s neck down into the hollow of his throat. Dan licked them up and then swallowed one more pulse of blood from the man’s neck, before he licked over the punctures with two generous swipes of his tongue. Vampire saliva could do all kinds of useful things. It flooded the human’s system when they were bitten and entered the bloodstream, causing them to lose consciousness, and it had healing properties. It would have the wounds on this guy scabbed over in an hour; by the next morning they would have faded to bruises.

Dan lowered the man to the ground and arranged him sitting up against the base of a tree, out of sight of the path. He would wake up in about an hour with a splitting headache and no memory of how he’d ended up asleep in the trees. Dan had never found out if the memory loss was something else the saliva caused or if it was a defense mechanism by the human brain, but he wasn’t going to start complaining now. It had saved him having to kill people when he fed for almost two centuries, and killing people wasn’t in his best interests. If every vampire killed every human they ever fed from, there would be no humans left and then what would they do?

Once he was sure the man was as comfortable as he was going to get anyway, Dan stood up and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, digging into the corners to clear away as much excess blood as he could. The blood was thick in the back of his throat and he was almost tempted to go again, but the knowledge that that would be dangerous for the human in front of him held him still. Instead he turned away, pushed a hand through his hair in an attempt to neaten it and straightened his coat. Then he stepped out of the trees, stuffed his hands into his pockets and set off home.

* * *

Dan’s flat was nicer than his Phil’s, if the building Dan’s text had led him to was any indication. Through the front doors Phil could see that the floor of the foyer gleamed, even with the wet autumn foot traffic, and there were two lifts with shining silver chrome doors set to the left and right.

He pressed the button next to Dan’s name on the intercom and shuffled his feet while he waited for Dan to answer. Maybe he should have told Martyn or Cornelia where he was going that afternoon, just in case something happened to him. He dismissed the thought as soon as it landed. Telling them would have required explaining that he had tracked down and befriended Dan in order to find and kill the leader of Dan’s clan, and he wasn’t about to let them in on his plan so they could steal his thunder. Martyn was always the one other hunters took seriously, their parents’ son in all ways. This was about Phil proving that he could live up to the Lester name just as well as Martyn could. Besides, Dan was just one vampire; Phil was sure he could take him in a fight if it came to it.

“Hey!” Dan’s voice was tinny through the speaker. “Come on up. You know the floor right?”

Phil gave a thumbs up to the camera in the intercom and pushed open the doors when they unlocked. His shoes squeaked on the floor as he crossed to the lifts and he tried not to feel like a lamb creeping into a lion’s den as he rode up to Dan’s floor.

Dan opened the door as soon as Phil knocked, and Phil couldn’t help but match Dan’s grin with one of his own. Dan was like that—he had one of those smiles that made you want to smile with him. Even knowing that he was a bloodsucking monster who had killed hundreds of people wasn’t enough to stifle Phil’s automatic reaction to seeing it.

Phil stepped inside and toed off his shoes when he saw Dan’s socked feet. Something in his stomach fluttered at the sight of the curl of Dan’s toes through the thin material. It was so... sweet, made him seem so young. It was completely at odds with what Phil knew Dan to be.

Dan hung his coat in the closet by the front door and then waved him through to the lounge room. Phil pulled up short at the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall, the heavy curtains flung wide so that the late-afternoon sun streamed over the floor.

“Alright?” Dan said, stopping at his shoulder.

Phil jerked his head towards the windows. “Those are impressive. I wish my flat had windows like that.”

“They’re good, aren’t they? I love letting all the light come in and warm the place up. Bit of a sauna in summer, though.”

Phil wasn’t sure what to make of that. He’d never engaged with a vampire during the day before and he’d definitely never stopped to speak to one, so he’d always assumed they avoided the sun as often as possible. It made sense, didn’t it? The sun could burn them away to nothing. But here Dan was turning his face into it, like a normal person.

His breath caught in his chest. If Dan could be so comfortable in the sun, he must have fed from someone recently. Last night after they’d met up? That morning? Had he found someone on their way home from work, or a jogger out for an early-morning run? It was a sharp reminder that he was there for a reason, and it wasn’t to admire Dan’s windows.

“I’d probably have to wear sunscreen indoors with windows like that,” Phil said, moving further into the room.

Dan chuckled. “You are abnormally pale. You sure you aren’t a vampire or something?”

Phil was glad for the opportunity to obviously fake a laugh. “You’re so funny, Dan. I’ve definitely never heard that one before.” He spread his arms wide. “So are you going to give me the grand tour or what?”

“It’s just a flat. I’m not sure there’s much to see.”

“Your windows are already cooler than mine so I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

Dan rolled his eyes but a smile was playing around his mouth. “Come on then. But don’t complain when it’s as boring as I told you it would be.”

Phil wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he’d been hoping for something more... telling. He hadn’t expected a big neon arrow sign that said, “Information on Dan’s vampire clan here”, but some other kind of hint would have been helpful. Instead, the whole place looked completely ordinary. In addition to the bright lounge room, there was a neat kitchen, a small bathroom, a spare bedroom that doubled as an office and Dan’s bedroom, which had those same massive windows in it. There were books, DVDs, video games and knick-knacks stacked on every surface, but nothing that might hint that Dan was a vampire. There had to be something somewhere; Phil just needed a chance to do a bit of snooping. 

“Told you it wasn’t that exciting,” Dan said, as they returned to the lounge.

Phil shrugged and settled on the sofa. “It’s bigger than my place. I think you could probably fit one and half people in your bathroom, which is one whole person more than you can fit in mine.”

“Maybe you should try yoga, work on your flexibility.”

“I’ll think about it. But for now, pizza?”

“Pizza.” Dan dropped onto the sofa beside him and grabbed his laptop from the coffee table. “Supreme alright? There’s nothing offensive about a supreme. It’s good for everyone. Unless you’re vegetarian.” He frowned and then eyed Phil as if a giant hand was about to come out of nowhere and stamp a V on his forehead. “You’re not vegetarian, are you?”

“Nope. Supreme is fine.” He turned towards the spare room, where he’d seen a shelf full of DVDs while Dan had been showing him around. “Do you want to watch something while we eat?”

“Sure,” Dan said absentmindedly as he navigated the Dominos website. “Go ahead and pick something. I don’t care what we watch.”

Phil hopped up and headed for the other room before Dan could change his mind. With a swift glance back at Dan, who was still focussed on ordering their food, he nudged the door mostly closed with his foot and then surveyed the room in front of him. There was a sofa bed pushed against the wall on the left, with a desk and a computer opposite; a shelf packed with DVDs ran along the back wall.

Phil made a beeline for the desk and eased one of the drawers open just in case it squeaked. He rifled through the contents but didn’t find anything more than a few bills and notes Dan seemed to have written to himself about various games he was playing, or errands he had to run, or food he wanted to buy. The other drawer was mostly empty; a few almost-dead pens rolled over some sheets of torn note paper and around discarded paperclips.

His shoulders slumped but he tried not to be too disappointed. It was too much to hope that his first attempt at snooping would uncover something that told him who the leader of Dan’s clan was. If only there was some way he could get Dan to introduce him to some more vampires—that might make it more obvious who was in charge.

As he turned to check out the DVDs so he could at least pick something good to watch, a flash of bright colour caught the corner of his eye.

A folded sheet of neon orange paper was on the floor on the other side of the sofa, where he hadn’t been able to see it from the door. He picked it up and unfolded it carefully, but it ended up just being a flyer promoting a Halloween party down near the docks the following week. Was Dan going to go? Could this be the chance he’d been hoping for? If they went to this party, might Phil meet more vampires from Dan’s clan? Maybe one of them could lead him to whoever was responsible for the vampires in southern England.

“Phil?” Dan’s voice called from the lounge. “Did you get lost in there?”

“Sorry!” he yelled back and plucked a random DVD from the shelf before hastening out of the room, the flyer still clutched in his hand. “You have a lot of DVDs. I had to make sure to choose something good.”

Dan was slumped back against the sofa, clicking through the settings on his TV. He spared a glance at the DVD case. “Attack on Titan. Good choice.” He grabbed it from Phil’s hand and stood to insert the disc into the player.

“What’s this?” Phil asked, holding up the flyer as he eased back onto the sofa.

Dan frowned at it as he returned to sit beside Phil and then took the paper to get a closer look at it. “Did you find this in the other room?”

Phil nodded. “Next to the sofa.”

Dan nodded in understanding. “Ava must have dropped it yesterday. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Your friend Ava?” Was she a vampire too? Or did Dan make a habit of having humans over to his flat? Was he thinking of turning her?

… Was he thinking of turning _Phil_?

“Yeah.” Dan chucked the flyer onto the coffee table and leaned back to scroll through the DVD menu.

“We should go,” Phil blurted.

Dan’s head turned towards him slowly, his eyes wide. “What?”

He gestured to the flyer. “To the party. We should go.”

“You want to go to a party. _You_.”

Phil folded his arms across his chest and slumped back into the cushions. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.” Dan spoke in a rush, like he was trying to head off an argument. “I guess I just... didn’t think it was your thing.”

“Parties can be fun if you go with the right people.”

Dan’s forehead creased. “And I’m the right person, am I?”

Phil shrugged nonchalantly. “You could be. I guess we’ll have to see.”

Dan smirked. “I guess so.”

* * *

“You’re going _where_?” Martyn asked, distant through the phone charging on Phil’s bedside table.

Phil settled the cat ears more securely in his hair and tried not to scratch at the nose and whiskers he’d painstakingly drawn on his face with a Sharpie. He probably should have borrowed an eyeliner pencil from Cornelia.

“To a party. I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“You might have to tell me again because I still don’t believe you. Since when do you go to parties?”

That had been Dan’s reaction too, when Phil had brought up the Halloween party a couple of weeks ago. Was there something about him that made people believe he just didn’t like to have fun? Dan and Martyn had both seemed so shocked.

“How do you know I haven’t always gone to parties? It’s not like we ever talk about anything other than hunting.”

“You’re the one who wants to talk about work all the time.” Martyn’s voice was heavy and weary. “I’m happy to talk about other things anytime you like.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Phil mumbled.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” 

“While we’re on the subject, do you really think going out tonight is the best idea? It’s Halloween.”

“Yes, Martyn, and it’s a Halloween party. It’s not like they can have it next week.”

“So are you going out after? Halloween is a big night for us. It’s the one night of the year the vampires don’t have to lurk in the shadows.”

Telling Martyn that he was going to this party _with_ a vampire to look for _other_ vampires was definitely a bad idea.

“I’ll keep an eye open while I’m out.”

There was a stunned silence from the phone. “Phil—”

“Oh, just let him go,” Cornelia chimed in. “Phil works hard! He deserves a night off to have fun with his new friend. Even if that night is Halloween.”

“And that’s another thing!” Martyn was starting to sound alarmingly like their dad. “Who is this new friend? Why haven’t we met him yet?”

“His name’s Dan and I’m not interested in bringing him around to meet my family of vampire hunters.”

“It’s not like he’s going to know. We’re not going to sit him down for tea and biscuits and say, ‘Lots of rain we’ve had! Seen any of the undead lately?’”

Phil’s mouth quirked up in a smile at the mental image. Wouldn’t that be something to see?

“Is he your boyfriend? Is that why you’re hiding him from us?”

Phil’s eyes bugged out of his head and he turned to the phone in shock. “What?! No!”

Cornelia cooed. “Oh, is that it, Phil? Don’t be embarrassed!”

“I’m not embarrassed!” His cheeks were so red he could feel them burning. “It’s just not true.”

Cornelia sighed, as if she was actually disappointed. “Fine. But you know you can always bring someone around. We’ll make them feel right at home. And I’ll make sure Martyn doesn’t tell any embarrassing stories from when you were kids.”

“Right,” Phil choked out. “Look, I have to go. Happy hunting.”

“Have fun,” she said and Martyn let out a wheezy grunt, like maybe she’d elbowed him in the side. “Be careful out there!”

They hung up and Phil shook his head at how ridiculous they were. Him and Dan. Dating. Where had they even got the idea from? It wasn’t like Phil made a habit of dating anyone. He’d never seen the point. None of the other hunters he knew interested him, and finding someone outside the organisation opened up all kinds of problems. How would he explain where he went every night, or his injuries when he got hurt? The whole relationship would be built on lies; it was easier to just be alone.

… Not that he’d never thought about how nice it might be to come home to someone who’d stayed up worrying about whether or not he was okay, or having someone at his back every night. For years, he’d watched Martyn and Cornelia fight together like they were two halves of one person, always in sync. He’d heard stories about his parents and knew they had been just the same, back in the day. Phil had never felt that kind of reassurance, had never felt secure in the knowledge that there was always someone there, in his corner, fighting with and for him.

He shook his head. He wasn’t going to waste time thinking about any of that now. He needed to be on his game; there was no telling what he was about to walk into. He stuffed his phone and wallet into his jeans and slung a coat on before heading out.

He and Dan had agreed to meet at the address listed on the flyer. It was some kind of warehouse near the river that had been converted into a party space or a club or something. Phil wasn’t sure and didn’t really care. It wasn’t like he would be going back. Dan had been right about that: he wasn’t really a party person. A small group of friends ‘round for takeaway and drinks was more his speed. Being pressed and pushed on all sides by a crowd of sweaty strangers on a dancefloor had always made his stomach curl more than it got him dancing. It was a good thing he was going to this party to work, not to have fun.

Apparently the flyers had been spread far and wide, because he was just one in a steady stream of people as he approached the warehouse. As he got nearer to the line waiting to enter, he started craning his neck, trying to find Dan amongst the superheroes, and the Harry Potter characters, and the sexy nurses. He wrapped his coat more tightly around himself as he walked past them, eyeing the women in their skimpy costumes. How did they wear clothes like that in weather like this? Didn’t their legs get numb?

Phil turned to look back the way he’d come, reaching for his phone in case Dan had sent him a message, but then the crowd parted and there he was. He was standing off to the side, the moon hanging huge in the sky behind him. He was dressed in a loose shirt, fitted trousers and boots that rose up his calves. A cape was tied at the base of his throat and fluttered in the breeze. He twirled a rose between his fingers and, when he looked up at Phil’s approach, he smiled and Phil’s jaw dropped at the sight of the fangs peeking over Dan’s lower lip.

“You’re a vampire,” Phil said, hoping Dan wouldn’t notice the unsteadiness of his voice. Did he know that Phil knew what he was? Did he know what Phil was trying to do?

Dan poked one of the fangs—fake, Phil could see when he looked closer—with the tip of his tongue. “I am.” His gaze roamed over Phil from top to toe and Phil tried not to squirm. “You’re the worst excuse for a cat I’ve ever seen. Did you draw on your face with a Sharpie?”

Phil huffed and was surprised when the tension eased out of his shoulders. There was no hidden agenda here; he wasn’t trying to send a secret message or warning. Dan was just being Dan. He’d come out to a party tonight because Phil had asked him to, and he’d made an effort with his costume because that was what Dan did.

Phil’s stomach tightened uncomfortably. He’d never stopped to think about how he was using Dan. He’d been aware of it, of course, but it had never occurred to him that Dan would actually care enough to seek him out or try to make this fun. Honestly, he hadn’t thought a vampire could feel anything even close to friendship for a human.

This was another thing he shouldn’t waste time thinking about. He shouldn’t make the mistake of getting attached to Dan either. He was a vampire, for one, and he would die as soon as Phil killed his clan leader. Sure, there was a chance Dan had just drifted into this clan after he’d been turned by someone else, but that didn’t usually happen.

“Phil?” Dan’s voice sounded far away. “Are you okay? You look like you just swallowed something bad. Are you feeling ill?”

Phil cleared his throat and forced a smile. “No, I’m fine.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed as they studied his face. “Are you sure? We don’t have to stay.”

“Didn’t you say Ava was going to be here? Won’t you miss seeing her?”

Dan waved that away like he didn’t care one way or the other. “Not really. If I see her, I see her. If not, whatever.”

Phil’s head tilted. “But... isn’t she your friend?”

“I think I’m her friend more than she is mine. We know a lot of mutual people, but I don’t seek out her company. She sort of just appears when she wants to.”

Those mutual people must be the rest of the clan, but it didn’t sound like Dan had much to do with them. It wasn’t unheard of for vampires to be loners and wanderers, but they did tend to stick together, at least in small groups in a larger territory. Phil figured it was something to do with being better able to protect their clan leader. Safety in numbers and all that.

If Dan was disconnected from the clan, maybe Ava was his next best bet. She sounded more sociable, so it was more likely she could introduce him to other vampires, and the more of them he knew, the more likely it was that one would lead him to the leader.

“Well, I want to meet her,” Phil said, turning to face the warehouse. The line had shortened; hopefully they’d still be able to get in.

Dan was silent for a long moment and then he shrugged. “Okay. I’ll keep an eye open for her. No promises, though.”

They joined the back of the line. Phil bounced on his toes while they waited, trying to keep his blood circulating and his legs warm. Thankfully it wasn’t a long wait before they were let in. Phil checked his coat at the door and then they rounded the corner into the main room. The floor was packed with people dancing to music that was blaring so loud Phil couldn’t make out the details—it was just noise. There was a bar across the room against the left wall, and just to their right was a set of steel stairs that led up to a mezzanine that looked out onto the dancers below. Whoever had done the place up had leaned into its warehouse history; it was all exposed steel beams and distressed bricks. Worn pipes at intervals along the walls had been turned into light fixtures.

Phil was immediately struck by how much this was not his scene. Why had he decided to come here? What was he hoping to learn really? How much could he find out about this clan leader if his head was pounding in time with the bass?

“Drink?” Dan asked, head tilted towards the bar.

“Oh, ah, sure.” Martyn always made a point of not drinking while they were on duty, because the last thing you needed while facing off against a vampire was slow and clumsy reflexes, but technically Phil wasn’t _on_ duty. He was just observing and hopefully making connections. Plus he would feel less out of place if he had something to occupy his hands.

“Go upstairs and try to find a table. I’ll find you.”

Phil nodded and they parted ways. The mezzanine was only slightly less crowded than the dancefloor, but at least it felt like there was a little more space to breathe. The high-top tables that lined the walls were all taken, but he did manage to carve out a bit of space along the railing between Batman and Robin, and a group dressed as the entire cast of Super Mario. From this vantage point, he could look down into the crowd. Most of the people blurred together under the pulsing pink and purple lights, but he could pick out various faces as they turned up towards the ceiling. He didn’t know any of the people they belonged to, and in a moment they were gone again, but they all looked... happy. 

What must it be like, to go out to a party with friends just to have a good time? Were they as carefree as they looked, or had they come to dance instead of sit at home and worry about all the things they couldn’t change? Did they have siblings? Did they feel weak where their siblings were tough? Did they know vampires were real? Would they run and hide if they met one, or would they be drawn in?

“Here you are!” Dan shouted from behind him and then, “Sorry!”, when he stood on the hem on Princess Peach’s dress.

Peach shuffled closer to her group of friends and Dan squeezed into the space she had left, holding a cocktail glass out for Phil to take. It was a vivid pink and garnished with a strawberry, completely at odds with the espresso martini Dan was sipping. He had tucked the rose he’d been carrying into the knot of his cape.

“Sorry!” Dan leaned forward so Phil could hear him over the music. “Did you want a beer?”

“No, this is fine. I like cocktails. I just... how did you know?”

Dan shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

“A hunch?” Phil’s stomach rolled. “What? Do I scream ‘girly’ to you?”

Dan’s mouth hardened. “No.” His voice was short but firm. “There’s nothing ‘girly’ about a drink, Phil. And what difference would it make if there was? You think being a girl is some kind of insult? You think girls can’t be tough?”

“Of course not—”

“It kind of sounds like you do.”

“I don’t! One of my best friends is a girl! She’s the toughest person I know!”

He could picture Cornelia nodding seriously. He knew how hard she had worked to become as good as she was at vampire hunting. So few hunters had taken her seriously, had scoffed at her lack of height and her delicate features. Now they had to train twice as hard just to keep up with her.

Dan shrugged like he didn’t care and turned to watch the dancefloor. Phil had never felt a wall go up in front of him so keenly. It stunned him. The fact that Dan, a vampire, could be disappointed in something Phil had said or done was mind-boggling. Dan was definitely in no position to judge him. But he had. And he had found Phil wanting.

Phil shuffled his feet and gulped down a mouthful of his drink. It went down smooth and sweet.

Dan glanced over at him, an unimpressed eyebrow perked. “Steady on.”

“Look, it’s not about girls not being tough, okay?”

Dan’s shoulders slumped with a sigh and he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does!”

Phil couldn’t say why it mattered that Dan understood where Phil was coming from. Dan hunted and killed innocent people; he had no morals to speak of. But Phil couldn’t stomach the idea of Dan being disappointed in him.

He took a deep breath and tried to steady his pounding heart. “When I was kid it was really obvious to everyone that Martyn, my brother, was the tough one of the two of us. He was always so capable and reliable and... boyish. He played football and rolled around in the mud and skinned his knees. I... wasn’t like that. I was ‘the sensitive one’.”

Dan was still watching the crowd, but his head tilted, like he was giving Phil his ear.

“I wanted to stay inside. I was terrible at sports and I hated getting my clothes dirty. A boy at school pushed me into a puddle when I was seven and I cried. The other kids laughed and started calling me names—‘girly’, ‘sissy’, things like that. The teachers told me to ‘man up’ because boys didn’t cry. They wanted to know why I wasn’t more like Martyn.”

Dan was watching his face now, but Phil couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I tried to make myself tougher, but it’s still like that now. My parents have a lot of people who work for them and everyone expects Martyn and me to take over the business when they’re gone. But people listen to Martyn in ways they don’t listen to me. They still think he’s the capable, reliable one. Martyn wouldn’t order a cocktail. He only drinks whisky.”

It felt like the music and the yelling of people trying to be heard had faded away; all Phil could hear was the blood rushing in his ears. He felt light, like he’d floated out of himself. The lingering taste of the alcohol in his mouth had turned sickly. Why had he told Dan that? He’d never even said it out loud to himself, let alone to someone else.

His body jolted when he felt a light touch just above his elbow and he looked down to see that Dan had reached out to put his hand on Phil’s arm. As he watched, Dan’s hand tightened, not like he was trying to pull him away or keep him in place, but like he was trying to offer his support.

“I’m sorry you felt like that.” Phil’s gaze shot up to meet Dan’s. “Those people should never have made you feel that way. And I’m sorry I judged you.”

Phil swallowed and took another sip of his drink to wet his suddenly dry throat. “It’s okay. You were right. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Dan’s hand dropped back to his side and Phil tried not to notice how cold his arm felt in its absence.

Dan looked from his drink to Phil’s and then knocked his own back. “I don’t dance.”

Phil laughed, short and breathy with relief. “Me either. I can’t believe I suggested this.”

“Do you want to get out of here then?”

Phil knew he should say no, should insist that they stick around and try to find Ava, but his whole body felt heavy and he didn’t want them to have to pretend that he hadn’t just poured all his self-esteem issues all over the floor between them.

So he said, “Yes, please.”

He finished his drink in two big gulps and they headed back towards the stairs, depositing their empty glasses on a table that was accumulating them on the way. Phil collected his coat and wrapped it tighter around himself as they stepped out into the brisk night air. His head felt like it was still thumping with the rhythm of the music.

“Sorry I made you come all the way out here for nothing,” Phil said as they started up the road towards the nearest Tube station.

Dan’s face crumpled in an amused frown. “Not for nothing. I got to hang out with you, didn’t I?”

Phil’s breath stuttered. Dan thought of him as a friend, that was clearer now than ever. But where did that leave Phil? He couldn’t call Dan his friend, not when there was a good chance Dan would wind up dead—properly dead—if Phil’s plan played out the way he hoped it would. And it wasn’t like Phil could just abandon it. Taking out the biggest clan in the country would make people really see him and take him seriously. Maybe they would even compare Martyn to him for once.

They walked mostly in silence and stopped at the stairs going down to the Tube.

“I’ll leave you here,” Dan said. “You’ll be okay getting home?”

“You’re not coming down?”

“No, I’ll keep walking.”

There was every chance Dan was off to find his next meal. Phil couldn’t say he didn’t care, because he’d grown up being told that human life was sacred and that vampires were monsters who preyed on the weak. But Dan had bought him a drink he would like based on a “hunch”, and he’d listened when Phil had told him about Martyn, and he’d said he didn’t mind wasting an evening if it meant he got to hang out with Phil. Maybe Phil owed him this one.

“Okay. I’ll text you tomorrow then?” Maybe overnight this whole weird experience would wash away and Phil could get back to what he was supposed to be doing.

Dan grinned. “Sure.” 

He grabbed Phil’s arm just as he was about to turn and head down the stairs, and when Phil turned back to look at him, Dan plucked the rose from where it was still kept safe in his cape. He held it out to Phil.

“Here.”

Phil’s gaze jumped from the rose to Dan’s face and then back again. “What’s this for?”

“I don’t know. Inviting me to a party you knew you’d hate? Being spontaneous? Telling me about Martyn? Whatever you want.”

Phil’s mouth twitched into a smile and he rolled the rose between his fingers. Dan had removed the thorns so there was no danger of pricking himself.

“Thanks.”

Phil bounced down the stairs and rocked on his feet as he waited for the train. It wasn’t very late, but it was a weeknight, and the carriage he stepped into was packed with costumed people who’d clearly left parties early in the hope that they would have recovered enough for work the next day.

He didn’t bother turning all the lights on when he got back to his flat, just moved straight through to his bedroom. He laid the rose on his bedside table, changed into his pyjamas and then climbed into bed.

He could shower in the morning.

* * *

The incessant buzzing of the doorbell was enough to drive Dan crazy, even in his sleep. He groaned as he surfaced into consciousness, mouth cottony where it was hanging half-open against his pillow. It was—he fumbled for his phone—11am. Too early for visitors.

He stuffed his face back into his pillow and was just about to doze off, when whoever was downstairs leaned hard against the doorbell again. 

Dan pushed himself up onto his elbows with a glower and a grumble, then stumbled out of his room towards the front door. Whoever had decided to bother him was going to fuck right off. He’d been out late and he didn’t deserve this kind of disrespect. He was a vampire clan leader. He had rights.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, he pushed the button by the front door to activate the camera at the building’s entrance. When he saw Ava’s beaming face, he rubbed his temples in an attempt to fend off the headache he already knew was coming.

“What do you want, Ava?”

She arched a delicate eyebrow. “Is that any way to speak to your best friend?”

“You’re not my best friend. In fact, you’re not even my friend. What do you want?”

“I saw you at that party last night.”

“Good for you.”

“That guy you were with—was that him? That one you were telling me about?”

“If you’re only here to gossip, I’m going back to bed.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is he here? In your flat? Did you hook up with him?”

Dan jumped back like a shock had gone through him. “With Phil?!”

“Is that his name?”

He flapped a hand at her. “It doesn’t matter what his name is. He isn’t here. You’re crazy and I’m hanging up now.”

“No! Wait!” She held a hand out towards the camera. “I have news. We need to talk.”

He pushed the button to let her in with heavy reluctance, but if he didn’t let her share her news she’d spend all day pressing that damn bell and he’d never get any peace. He unlocked the door for her and then trudged into the kitchen to make himself a coffee to fortify himself. 

She found him standing at the counter stirring in the milk and she eyed the kettle. “You’ve not left enough for me, I see.”

“Because I don’t want you to stay any longer than you have to. You said you have news.”

She leaned a hip against the counter and folded her arms across her chest. “Another group was killed last night. I think the hunters are making a more concerted move against us.”

“Our clan specifically, or vampires in general?”

She shrugged. “Does it matter? In London, vampires in general _are_ our clan.”

“So tell them to be more careful.”

“That’s it?”

He sipped his coffee and winced at the heat of it. “It’s not like we can go out and storm their headquarters. Where did you hear this anyway? Do you have a mole in the organisation or something?”

“Of course not.” She absentmindedly twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “We just make a habit of keeping an eye on their comings and goings, and people tell me things because they know I’ll tell you.” She chewed her lower lip and then cocked her head. “Why can’t we storm their headquarters?”

Dan choked on the coffee he’d just slurped into his mouth. “What?”

“Since the dawn of time, there have been vampires and hunters, and we’ve always stood back and let them kill us. We’ve never taken the fight to them.”

“Because it would be a bloodbath!”

She bared her teeth at him and flicked her tongue at the tip of one of her fangs. “All the better for us.”

“The humans will notice. We’re supposed to be a secret. The more humans know we exist, the harder it will be for us to eat and the more people will be out to eliminate us.”

“We could lure them out! I’m sure if groups of us worked together we could find a way to take out more hunters than the ones we get when they come after us!”

“This is crazy. If we go after them, we’re basically starting an all-out war. We’re fine as we are right now. There’s no need to make things more complicated.”

“But—”

“No.” Dan lowered his mug to the counter slowly, but only because it was his favourite one and if he slammed it down he’d break it. “I won’t condone this. I’m the leader. What I say, goes.”

Ava’s mouth pulled to the side in what looked like a stifled scowl. “Oh, now you want to be a leader? Centuries of you turning us and then casting us aside, of us trying to make you care, and now you want us to respect your authority?”

“Better late than never?”

“Ugh!” She pushed herself away from the counter and stormed out of the kitchen. “It’s always jokes with you. Can’t you be serious for five minutes?”

He hurried after her. “I was just being serious! You didn’t like that either!”

She whirled back to him and her face was red with barely contained fury. “No, Dan, what I don’t like is how little you care. Why can’t you take some responsibility?”

“I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“Neither did we!”

Their breathing was heavy. Dan took a deep, shuddering breath and stepped away from her. “If you go after the hunters, I won’t go with you.”

“That’s probably for the best. They’ll take some of us out anyway. If one of them gets lucky and stakes you, we’re all dust. So just stay here, Dan, alone in your flat. Don’t get involved. That’s what you’re good at.”

She let herself out. The click of the door behind her was loud like a gunshot.

The silence was deafening, but Ava’s voice echoed in his ears, each word an accusation. She didn’t know why he’d turned so many people into vampires. No one did. They all assumed it was some kind of power trip. Maybe it was, on some level. Maybe some vampire therapist would tell him he was just desperately trying to grasp some kind of control. 

He didn’t remember much about the process of turning. Another defense mechanism of the brain probably. He assumed other vampires didn’t remember it either, but he’d never asked and no one had ever volunteered the information. It wasn’t the kind of thing they talked about. There was no point. What good would it do? They couldn’t go back to their human lives, so it was best to give it all as little thought as possible. Maybe if he remembered it he wouldn’t have turned so many people himself.

He remembered the before very clearly, though, despite it having happened 200 years ago. He’d been out late, trying to line up some work for the next day, but was on his way to his mother’s house. She and his brother, and occasionally his father, still lived in those two tiny rooms, though there was more space for them now that Dan was out on his own. He’d managed to scrape enough money together that he could cover his rent and food, with a little left over. He could have saved it for himself, but they needed it more than he did. Plus, there was a part of him that still loved the feeling he got when his mother looked at him with that weary mixture of pride and gratitude. 

It was ironic that his selflessness had been his undoing. If he’d been more selfish that night and saved the money for himself, he would never have turned into that back alley.

It was narrow, the walls of the buildings piled high with rubbish that threatened to fall on him if he so much as brushed against it the wrong way. His nose wrinkled at the cloying scent of human waste. He’d glanced up and been startled to a halt by the figure that lurched upright from further up the alley. It was too dark to make out the stranger’s features, but it was tall and broad—a man, probably—and the ragged edges of his too-large overcoat brushed through the sludge at their feet.

Dan’s heart was racing and a curl of panic unfurled in the pit of his stomach. The man took a single step towards him and Dan matched it with a step backwards. Something in the back of his mind was screaming to run. He edged further away, determined not to take his eyes off the man in front of him, even if he had to shuffle backwards through the dark all the way to the street. But between one blink and the next, the man launched himself straight at him.

Dan stumbled back and his feet tangled in a coil of rotting rope. The man grabbed his arms and didn’t seem to notice Dan beating his fists uselessly into the man’s chest to keep him away. The nausea rose in him as the man’s rank breath wafted into his face. Now that the man was right in front of him, Dan could make out the man’s sunken eyes and hooked nose. 

The man wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him closer. It might have been an embrace between lovers except that the man had shoved the wrist of his free hand into Dan’s mouth. Dan coughed at the muddy unwashed taste of his skin, but that just allowed the man to push his wrist further into him.

Dan gasped and his eyes widened as his inhalation drew a liquid across his tongue, into his mouth and down his throat. It was heavy and coppery—blood. Dan gagged and struggled, trying to kick his way free. Tears were streaming down his face and then all at once the man’s wrist was gone. Dan dragged in a desperate, panting breath, felt the man clasp his head between his hands and then there was sharp jerk as—

—Dan opened his eyes. His cheek was wet where it rested in a puddle and his head was pounding, steady like a drum. He pushed himself up until he could prop himself against a wall. The moon was higher in the sky than he remembered it being, casting a glow between the clouds and illuminating the alley. There had been a man, Dan remembered through the heavy fog that seemed to cloud his mind. He’d... attacked him?

Dan dragged himself to his feet and braced himself against a broken crate. He’d been on his way to see Ma. Yes. He needed to see her. Right away. His throat was dry and every inch of him ached. She would fix it.

Anyone who’d been around to see him would have thought he was drunk from the way he staggered up the street. He felt like he was drunk, too. His vision was blurred around the edges and time was moving strangely. He felt like he’d been walking forever, but then he looked around and found he’d only walked as far as the next street corner.

Eventually he reached the building his family lived in and landed hard against the front door as he reached to open it. He fumbled it open and then pulled himself up the stairs to the second floor. The door on the left was the one that opened into his parents’ main room. He hammered on it with a clenched fist and called out to his mother when it seemed like she was taking too long to answer.

The door was yanked open and Dan just managed to catch himself on the frame before he tumbled into the room face first.

“Dan?”

His brother’s face swam in and out of his vision; Dan lurched past him into the front room. His brother closed the door behind him, as Dan cast his gaze around. The hearth contained a little fire that gave off a gentle glow of warmth and light. The same wooden furniture he’d known all his life was still there, growing more and more worn with time. But apart from the two of them, the room was empty. The door to the pokey bedroom was standing open, but that room was empty too.

“Where’s Ma?” Dan said, turning his head to catch the scent that was teasing him. It was sweet, like the cakes he’d always eyed wistfully in the shops, but had never been able to afford.

“She went out to drop off some food for a sick friend. She’ll be back soon. Are you alright? You’re very pale.”

“Has she been baking?”

He huffed a good-natured laugh. “Ma? Definitely not.”

The smell grew stronger as his brother stepped closer. Dan’s mouth was watering, completely unaffected by the ache building in his jaw. He was so... hungry. 

His gaze focussed on the clean skin of the throat in front of him. He could almost swear he could hear the blood pumping there. Without a thought, he reached out, grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled him close.

He stiffened. “Dan? What’s going on?”

Dan leaned in and brushed his nose against the pulse point, inhaling deeply. That smell flooded his senses; Dan was dizzy with it.

His brother tried to pull away. “Dan! Are you—”

Dan never knew what his brother saw in his face, but Dan could clearly see the fear that overtook his. His brother opened his mouth to scream but, before he could get a sound out, Dan lunged forward, tearing his teeth into flesh. He didn’t notice the fangs that had dropped into his mouth until they pierced skin. Blood gushed into his mouth and down his chin, the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. The deeper he drank, the more his vision cleared. Sounds from the neighbouring rooms that he hadn’t been able to hear before were suddenly thundering in his ears.

It wasn’t until Dan dropped his brother’s body to the floor that he realised he had gone limp. Dan stared down at him, numb, seeing his ravaged throat and his wide glassy eyes, but unwilling to believe what it meant. Even as he knelt and gently pressed a hand over his brother’s heart, Dan expected him to stir.

But there was no heartbeat. He was the kind of still that you only saw in the dead. 

Because he _was_ dead.

Because Dan had killed him.

Dan’s breath stuttered and he jerked away. With a shaking hand, he reached towards his mouth, where he could still feel the fangs poking into his lower lip. His fingers came away wet with the blood that stained his chin.

What had he done?! What had that man done to _him_? He was some kind of... monster. 

A door creaked open and Dan turned towards the front door of his family’s set of rooms, but it hadn’t moved. With a start, he realised that he’d heard the door to the building open downstairs as if it were right next to him. It shouldn’t have been possible... but more importantly, he could now also hear the murmur of his mother’s voice, and his father’s answering her.

Dan shot to his feet and he backed away from his brother’s body. His mind was a chaotic mess of what to do and where to hide, even as he knew there was nothing he could do and nowhere he could go. His parents footsteps were right outside the door and then it swung open to reveal him.

There was a beat of stunned silence as his parents stared from one son to the other, the youngest clearly dead on the floor and the oldest covered in blood. Then his mother screamed.

His father rushed towards him and Dan didn’t think before locking his hands around his father’s reaching arms and slamming him into the nearest wall. Then he ran towards the open door, narrowly missing his mother, who flung herself out of the way before he could run her down. He flew down the stairs, two at a time, smacking the people who lived in the downstairs rooms out of the way as he ran past. When he burst onto the street, he kept running and didn’t look back.

Two hundred years later, Dan still felt hollow when he remembered his brother’s body lying there, cold and lifeless. Sure, he made flippant jokes about why he kept making new vampires, but he knew deep down that he’d spent two centuries trying to fill that void inside him. It wasn’t even as if he and his brother had been especially close, but in killing him, Dan had lost his whole family in one fell swoop. 

The ringing of his phone jarred him out of his thoughts. It was Phil, of course, but he let it ring for a few seconds before answering.

“Hey!” Phil said. “Did you get home okay last night?”

Right—the party. He’d been so caught up in his memories that even Halloween felt like it had happened years ago, instead of yesterday.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “You did too, I guess? I assume you wouldn’t have called and asked about me if you’d been taken hostage by a serial killer or something.”

“No, probably not. Listen, I was thinking that last night was kind of a letdown. I wasn’t the best company and we didn’t get to talk much. Could we have a redo? I have to help my brother with some stuff for the next couple of nights, but we could have dinner on Friday? Maybe see a movie or something, too, if you want?”

Dan’s eyes narrowed. “Dinner and a movie...?”

“Yeah, is that—Oh!” Phil laughed awkwardly. “No! I didn’t mean—It’s not—It’s not a date! Not that there would be anything wrong with that! You’re extremely dateable! But not by me! We’re friends!”

The idea of dating Phil was... interesting. Dan didn’t really date anyone; it wasn’t a rule, but it made things easier. Dating someone meant letting them get close to you. And how close could someone really get if you were trying to hide that you were a vampire from them? Dating another vampire would get around that issue, but he’d never liked anyone enough to bother. 

He liked Phil, though. As a person. They laughed about the same things. Conversation was easy between them. He’d been with people more conventionally attractive than Phil, but Phil... had kind eyes. And when he stirred his sugar into his coffee, he poked his tongue between his teeth. And last night he’d told Dan about all the ways he’d felt inadequate compared to his brother, as if Phil himself had nothing to offer. Dan had never met this brother of his—Martyn, he thought his name was—but he couldn’t see how anyone could look at Phil and find him lacking.

But none of that mattered because this wasn’t a date. Phil had said so.

Dan cleared his throat. “Yeah, no. Of course. Just dinner and a movie between friends. I’ll even let you pick. Because I’m a good friend.”

Phil let out a little sound that might have been relief. “Great. I have to go so we’ll have to figure out the details later. I’ll see you Friday.”

“Yep. See you Friday.”

They hung up and Dan’s heart was racing.

* * *

When Phil woke on Friday there was a churning in his stomach that he couldn’t explain. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought he was nervous, but there was no reason to be. He had a normal day planned, restocking his hunting equipment, watching daytime TV and then seeing Dan in the evening. There was nothing unusual about any of that.

In fact, he was determined to make the day as normal as possible. The last few nights, patrolling with Martyn and Cornelia, had reminded him of what he was supposed to be doing. He’d let himself get distracted by going to that party and telling Dan all those things. He could retroactively try to convince himself that being open with Dan would lead to Dan being open with him, which could only help Phil’s investigation... but he knew that wasn’t what had happened. He’d let himself forget what Dan was, or at least decided it didn’t matter for that couple of hours. But Dan was a vampire. He had killed people and continued to kill them every time he needed a meal. He couldn’t let himself be distracted again.

So during their dinner and movie plans Phil was going to mine Dan for as much information as he could. Maybe he could get Dan to invite him over again, and Phil could do some more snooping around his flat. There had to be clues about the leader of Dan’s clan somewhere. If he could get into Dan’s phone he might be able to find something solid, but how was he going to accomplish that?

Later that afternoon, he was just starting to think about what he should wear when his phone rang. Phil took one look at the screen and sighed.

“Hey, Martyn.”

“Hey, I got word that a group of them are gathering at an abandoned factory out in Brentford. Sounds like there’s going to be a few more of them than usual, so come to our flat first and we’ll gear up together before we go.”

“Tonight?”

There was a tense silence from the other end of the phone. “Yes, Phil. Tonight. Is that a problem?”

Phil chewed his lip. “It’s just... I have plans.”

“With Dan again?” Martyn’s voice was short. “You went to a party with him a few nights ago!”

“Yeah, and tonight we’re having dinner.”

“And this _isn’t_ a date?”

“No!”

Martyn let out a rumbly kind of growl. “We really need you tonight. Cornelia and I can’t do it alone and you know that by tomorrow there’s a chance they’ll have split up and moved on. What’s happened to you lately? It’s like you don’t even care anymore!”

Phil bristled. “Of course I care! But haven’t you and Cornelia always told me to make friends? And now that I have you don’t like it?”

“That’s not what this is about. I want you to have friends. You’re so alone all the time—it’s not healthy. But I’m also questioning your commitment to the cause. We’re hunters. That should be your first priority. Can’t you hang out with Dan tomorrow? During the day?”

Phil could feel the words on the tip of his tongue, pushing to spill out and let Martyn know exactly how committed he was, how he had tracked down and befriended a vampire all on his own just so he could take them all down. But if he told him, Martyn would want to be involved and that would defeat the purpose. He was just as capable as Martyn. He just had to prove it.

“Fine,” Phil bit out. “I’ll be there soon.”

Phil jabbed the End Call button and threw the phone down on his bed. Martyn was right. The vampires could be gone tomorrow and Dan wasn’t going anywhere. It was the expectation that Phil was just at Martyn’s beck and call that drove him crazy. He wasn’t head of the organisation yet and their parents were in good health, so he was getting well ahead of himself.

His gaze caught on the rose Dan had given him after the Halloween party. He’d dropped it in a cup of water on his bedside table, but the petals were drooping a bit at the edges. Sometimes Phil felt a bit like that: tired and wilted. 

He grabbed his phone again and dialled Dan’s number as he dragged his gear out of his wardrobe. At least he’d taken the time to replace and repair everything today; he could imagine the look on Martyn’s face if he showed up lacking supplies.

“Couldn’t wait to talk to me, huh?” 

Why did Dan’s voice always sound like there was a laugh in it? How cheerful could you be if you had to kill people to keep yourself alive?

“Actually.” Phil pulled a black t-shirt out of a drawer and flung it on the bed. “Can we postpone? I’m really sorry. I’ve been feeling sick all afternoon. I thought it might get better but I don’t want to risk it.”

“Oh.” Dan’s voice had gone flat, but he made an effort to perk it up when he continued, “Don’t worry about it! It sucks that you’re sick.”

Phil hummed a noise of agreement. “I’m going to try to get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Sure. Feel better!”

Why did that little white lie feel so much bigger than the one Phil was telling Dan about who he really was? Was it because he had told this lie because of Martyn? Or did it have something to do with the inkling he was getting that Dan wasn’t lying to him? Sure, he hadn’t told Phil he was a vampire, but why would he? That would be crazy. But everything else Dan had ever said to him rang with alarming honesty, from his TV preferences to what he’d said about his family.

He shook his head and changed his shirt. He didn’t have time to think about it. Martyn had made it sound like there would be a fair few vampires waiting for them at this old factory; he needed to focus or he’d wind up dead.

He slipped on his harness and pulled on a coat. It was a brisk 15 minute walk to Martyn and Cornelia’s building. It wasn’t as nice as Dan’s, but it was nicer than Phil’s. Phil suspected that was Cornelia’s influence; Martyn would have lived anywhere as long as he had somewhere to keep his stakes.

Cornelia was waiting for him at the front door of their flat when Phil stepped out of the lift. She greeted him with a hug and a smile that lit up her eyes.

“Sorry you had to cancel your plans,” she said, ushering him inside.

“I’m surprised he told you about that. I figured he wouldn’t think it important enough to mention.”

Her lips pursed. She’d tried to maintain a happy middle-ground between them over the years, which Phil appreciated more than he could say. She knew that she was probably the only friend he had, if he didn’t count Dan, which Phil obviously didn’t. It must have been hard for her, caught between two brothers who could argue about passing the potatoes over a dinner table.

“He’s trying his best.”

“By questioning my commitment? By finding fault with everything I do?”

“He doesn’t.”

“It’s implied.”

Her shoulders dropped in time with her sigh, but she let it go as she led him into the lounge. Martyn was perched on the edge of the sofa, selecting stakes from the stockpile of hunting gear that covered the coffee table.

“Thanks for coming,” Martyn said, voice tight. 

“Sure.” Phil dropped to the floor beside the table and started stocking up on extra stakes of his own. “How many of them are we expecting?”

“We think around ten.”

Phil shot a look at him. “Ten? Are we meeting other hunters there?”

Martyn shook his head. “The three of us can take them. Apparently some of them are newly turned. They’ll be weaker and won’t know what they’re doing. We’ll be fine if we watch each other’s backs.”

Phil hesitated but then nodded slowly. As much as Martyn frustrated the hell out of him, Phil still trusted him to know what they needed to survive another night. If he said they could deal with this group between the three of them, there was no reason to disbelieve him. Phil still grabbed an extra dagger and as many stakes as he could carry though.

They all looked bulkier under their coats when they stood up, but hopefully no one on the street would look closely enough to notice. Phil turned his phone off and stuffed it in his pocket, and Martyn checked that his gun was fully loaded with silver bullets before sliding it into the holster at his hip. Cornelia turned off the lights and locked the door behind them.

* * *

With his plans for the evening cancelled, Dan decided to go out and find his next meal. It had been a few days since he’d fed and with a bit of luck Phil would be feeling better tomorrow and would up for hanging out. Dan needed to be prepared.

He was wandering aimlessly, keeping an eye open for someone who looked distracted, when his gaze landed on three people on the opposite side of the street. He came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the footpath and gave an apologetic but absentminded wave at the woman who collided with him.

It was Phil and two others: a man roughly his height and a short woman with vibrant red hair. Which would have been fine, except that Phil was supposed to be sick in bed. So what was he doing walking down the street, looking as perfectly healthy as all the other times Dan had seen him?

Dan turned and started heading in the same direction as they were. He crossed the road at the first opportunity so he could keep a closer eye on them and not accidentally lose them if they wandered off into a side street. When they descended into the Tube, he let himself be swallowed up by the crowd so Phil wouldn’t notice him if he looked around.

When the train they were waiting for arrived, Dan hopped into the carriage down from theirs and squeezed himself into the corner at the end so he could keep an eye on them through the tiny windows. It was a good thing Phil was so tall; if Dan had been trying to follow the short woman with him, he would have easily lost them in the crowd ages ago.

They stayed on the train for about half an hour. The further they got from the city centre, the more the carriages emptied and Dan tried to tuck himself deeper into the corner in the hope that they wouldn’t notice him. Throughout the journey, Phil and his companions chatted amongst themselves but Phil’s face was hard, and his shoulders stiffer than Dan had ever seen them before. Sure, he’d never seemed like the most relaxed guy, but when they hung out together Phil’s shoulders would gradually loosen into a more natural slump.

Was the other man Phil’s brother? There was a vague resemblance between them and they didn’t seem to speak directly to each other much. The woman was wearing a smile that was almost too bright as she turned from one to the other, as if she was trying to convince them that they were happier than they thought they were.

When they got off the train, Dan gave them as much of a headstart as possible, only leaping out of the carriage when the doors had started beeping a warning that they were closing. From there, they walked south. There were fewer people on the streets here; luckily the sun had set so Dan could hang back and stick to the shadows. 

Where were they going? And what were they going to do? The questions had been rattling around Dan’s brain since he’d followed them onto the train. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought they were running some kind of drug deal, but he just couldn’t make that stick with what he knew of Phil, who didn’t seem to have a dishonest bone in his whole body. He couldn’t speak to what the other two were capable of, though. Was this something they had dragged Phil into? Was that why he had lied to Dan earlier? Was he ashamed of what his brother wanted him to do?

They walked until they reached a string of derelict factories on the banks of the river. From there, the other man stepped ahead of Phil and the woman to take the lead. Dan slowed to keep pace with them. They stopped outside a three-storey building of weathered brown bricks. A street light flickered nearby and glinted off the shattered windows hanging on in the panes. 

Dan pulled back into the dark of a doorframe as the three looked up and down the street before they slipped past the gate and into the factory. Then, he hurried forward on silent feet and followed them inside.

* * *

The air inside the factory Martyn had brought them to was icy and stale. They’d dropped their coats at the entrance so they wouldn’t be inhibited during the fight. Phil rubbed his palms together as quietly as he could, not wanting to draw unwanted attention to them, but also not wanting his fingers to be frozen when the fight started. Their presence had probably already been sensed, though. The door they’d found to get inside had squealed like a pig on rusted hinges and the old glass from the busted windows crunched under their heavy boots.

The ground floor had been gutted, empty but for a series of steel beams holding up the second-floor walkway. There was a dark room at the far end of the building that had probably served as an office or specialised workroom, back in the day; Phil wasn’t keen to go wandering into it on his own when there were vampires lurking about.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Phil breathed into Martyn’s ear, when they reached the middle of the floor and no one had appeared.

Martyn nodded, a quick, jerky movement that seemed to match the way his eyes were darting around the darkness cloaking them. On Phil’s other side, Cornelia was very still but her breath was quickening—she was afraid and trying not to show it.

A single footstep shattered the silence and the three of them turned. A woman stepped out of the darkness. She was probably the most vampiric-looking vampire Phil had ever seen: long black hair, skin like snow and lips the colour of fresh blood.

“Well, well. Of all the abandoned factories in London, three hunters had to walk into mine.”

Her Scottish brogue was surprising, but not as surprising as when her gaze trailed over his face and she froze. Her eyes widened and then her mouth curled into a slow, delighted smile.

“Phil.” Her laugh was incredulous. “Isn’t this a surprise?”

Martyn and Cornelia both turned to him at once.

“You know her?” Cornelia sounded betrayed.

“No!” He shook his head violently. “I swear, I’ve never seen her before.”

The woman waved a careless hand. “Don’t worry. He’s not lying. He doesn’t know me, but I know him.”

“How?” Phil demanded. 

“You keep interesting company, for a hunter.”

Martyn and Cornelia still looked confused, but Phil’s expression cleared all at once. Dan. This must be Ava—he’d said she was probably going to be at the Halloween party. Had she seen them together? But how did she know his name? Had Dan told her about him?

“It doesn’t matter now, though,” Ava continued. “You won’t be making it out of here alive.”

Martyn snorted. “You’re very confident for a vampire with no back-up.”

“Who said I don’t have back-up?”

As if her words were a signal, a group of vampires melted out of the darkness along the walls and circled them. There were at least twenty of them—way more than the ten new and untrained vampires Martyn had bargained for.

Cornelia sucked in a breath and Phil’s stomach dropped. 

“Good luck,” Ava said, and then the vampires fell on them.

* * *

Dan’s mind had short-circuited. What the fuck was happening? He’d followed them into the factory and crept up to the second floor to get a better view, expecting to see something shady. Instead Ava had walked out of the shadows like some kind of movie villain and Phil was a vampire hunter?

Did he know what Dan was? He must. So why hadn’t he killed him already? He could have done it weeks ago, when they were alone in Dan’s flat. Or led him off after the Halloween party and staked him then. What game was he playing?

Because if there was one thing Dan knew now, it was that Phil must be playing some kind of game.

The thought of it made his chest ache. He was so stupid. Had he really thought, after two centuries of wandering, that he’d finally found someone who _got_ him?

He tightened his jaw and studied the fight going on below him. The hunters had turned their backs to each other, forming a triangle so that they could defend themselves from all sides, but they were still woefully outnumbered and completely cut off from any line of escape. It might actually work in their favour. There were so many vampires that they couldn’t all reach the hunters at once and some of them even seemed to be getting in each other’s way. Between that and the silver chain the short woman was wielding like a whip, the hunters seemed to be holding the vampires at bay.

But then Phil landed a kill, driving a stake neatly into the heart of the vampire in front of him, and it spurred the vampires into a frenzy.

Dan wavered. He could just leave—no one would ever even know he’d been there—but that felt cowardly. Should he go down there and help? Which side was he supposed to be on? This was his clan... but there was no way the hunters were going to get out of this alive on their own. Phil had lied to him, but was Dan really just going to stand around and watch him die?

* * *

The sweat dripping into Phil’s eyes was turning everything around him into an even blurrier world of chaos than it already was. His heart was pounding and the air was a cacophony of harsh breaths from Martyn and Cornelia, screeches from the vampires, and the thumps and slices of their daggers and stakes trying to land a blow. Phil had already taken one vampire down and maybe it had put the fight into Martyn and Cornelia, because they had soon after felled one vampire each. But there seemed to be no end to them. When one vampire slumped to the ground, another appeared in its place as if the first had never even been there.

A line of fire raced down Phil’s arm as a vampire wielding a shard of broken glass sliced through his skin. Phil gasped and the vampires around him hissed. Their pupils dilated and their fangs dropped as beads of blood welled along the surface of the wound. The vampires pressed closer, hands reaching for him, and Phil swiped a dagger through the air in an effort to keep them back.

From somewhere to his left, Cornelia shrieked and he risked a glance at her. Somehow the vampires had managed to draw her away and she was trying to fight back five at once, but a couple had come prepared and had caught the end of her chain in their gloved hands.

Martyn whirled to face her, his face wild with panic, and yanked the gun from its holster. The shot was an explosion in Phil’s ears, starting a ringing in his head that drowned out even his own cry when a hand tightened like a vice against his forearm.

He turned to find Ava sneering at him as she dragged him closer. Her eyes were so dark and glassy he could see himself reflected in them; her fangs were razor sharp.

“No!” Phil struggled to pull his arm free. 

The gun fired again and then there was pressure driving into the middle of his back. He thought he’d been punched until Martyn yelled, a desperate, broken sound, and then the burning started. 

He’d been shot.

Phil gasped and dropped his stake to clutch his chest. He was on fire from the inside out, centred on that molten silver bullet and washing outwards in waves of heat. The back of his shirt was sticking to him in the mess of sweat and blood.

He was going to die here, in this cold factory, on the ground with the broken glass and the rats’ nests. Even if Martyn and Cornelia managed to fight the rest of the horde off, they wouldn’t have time to do that _and_ get him back to headquarters for medical attention. They’d spent half an hour on the train alone!

It was a weird thing to be thinking about at a time like that.

Phil stumbled and sank to his knees. He wanted to slump to the ground, but Ava’s grip on his arm was keeping him upright. His breath was coming short—was that the panic or had the bullet done something to his lungs?

Martyn was a whirling frenzy, trying to fight back the vampires around him to get to Phil. He wasn’t going to make it in time.

Phil’s head was heavy and his eyelids were drooping. Ava grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him up, and Phil cried out as the movement pulled at the wound in his back. Her mouth opened wide as she leaned towards him and—

Ava let out a muffled gasp as an elbow connected with her side and then she was ripped away from him and flung across the ground as if she weighed nothing at all.

“Dan?” Phil wheezed.

It wasn’t possible. There was no way Dan was there. He must be hallucinating. But if this was what dying was like, it wasn’t so bad. Dan kneeled in front of him and the spicy scent of his cologne wrapped around Phil like the warmest blanket in winter. His hand was gentle on Phil’s chest through his thin t-shirt.

Phil slumped until his forehead came to rest in the dip where Dan’s throat met his shoulder. His scent was stronger there and Phil inhaled deeply.

“I’m gonna die,” Phil whispered and then he sobbed.

It was only once but he couldn’t hold it back. He wanted to see his parents. He hadn’t even talked to his mum that day. He wanted Martyn to fix everything, because Martyn always had a plan. He wanted one of Cornelia’s hugs. He wanted to eat pizza and watch anime on Dan’s sofa and tell him all the things he’d never told anyone else.

“Don’t cry, Phil.” Dan’s fingers were gentle in Phil’s hair as he raised his head. 

Dan pressed his wrist into Phil’s mouth—it was wet and sticky and Phil gagged on the coppery taste that flooded his mouth. He wanted to push Dan away, but his arms were too weak to do more than flex at his sides.

Dan pulled his wrist away and gripped Phil’s head in his hands. He whispered, “You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

Phil’s head jerked as Dan snapped his neck.


	2. Part Two

The world stops when the male snaps Phil’s neck. Martyn doesn’t see where he comes from: one second the female is about to drain Phil dry and the next, this male has flung her across the room. Phil leans into him, almost like he knows this male, but that can’t be true, and they speak. The male reaches towards Phil’s mouth, but Martyn can’t see what he’s doing from where he’s standing.

And then the male jerks Phil’s head sharply to the right and Phil collapses, like a marionette that’s had its strings cut.

Rage engulfs Martyn. He whirls like a dervish, slicing and staking any vampire that comes too close. They back away, wary now, and he makes a break for the vampires crowding Cornelia. As much as he wants to go to Phil, he’s already— 

Cornelia is in more immediate danger.

He ploughs into the vampires surrounding her, scattering them like bowling pins in their surprise. Cornelia is gasping for breath and cradling her left hand against her chest, her wrist clearly broken. There’s a bloody gash down her right cheek and three staked vampires at her feet.

Martyn drives a dagger into the neck of the closest vampire and grabs another by the shoulder to aim a punch at his nose. The vampires have enclosed them and all he can see are their reaching hands. Cornelia lashes out with a dagger to keep them at bay, her breath heaving in her panic. They’re not going to make it out of this. The realisation tightens his chest. Phil’s already dead and Cornelia’s going to die, too, and it’s Martyn’s fault. They trusted him and he led them into this nightmare that they’re never going to escape from.

That doesn’t mean he won’t take out as many as he can before he goes down.

He slashes through the throat of one vampire and stakes another that lunges for him. He’s reaching for another stake when a voice behind him roars.

“Stop!”

The vampires seem to shudder and some of them fall away but others press forward towards Martyn.

“I said stop!” 

The rest of the vampires halt and they all, Martyn and Cornelia included, turn to face the male standing over Phil’s body. Phil’s been laid out on his back and his eyes are closed. He could almost be sleeping but for the awkward angle of his neck.

The male is pressing a stake into his chest over his heart.

“All of you go home,” he says, “or I’ll end it for good.”

His voice is hard, completely at odds with his boyish face and messy curls. Both hands grip the base of the stake, steady and sure.

The female who’d greeted them when they arrived steps out of the crowd. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Martyn eyes them, shifting his weight nervously from one leg to the other as the tension crackles between the two vampires. There’s something playing out here that he doesn’t understand. Why isn’t the male fighting with the rest of them? The vampires are clearly on the winning side of this battle. What does the male have to gain by forcing the vampires to leave?

The male sneers. “Try me. I’ve never cared about any of this before; why should I care now?”

“If you stake yourself, Phil will die, too.”

The male doesn’t waver. “He’s dead either way.”

Cornelia keens but stifles the sound by pressing her uninjured hand to her mouth. There’s a yawning gulf where Martyn’s stomach used to be. He can’t feel anything; even his fingers are numb.

The female studies the male, eyes darting from his face to the stake and then to Phil’s body. She lets out a rumbling growl and takes a calculated step back. The vampires around them seethe.

“This isn’t over, Dan,” she says. She turns to the crowd and jerks her head. “Leave them for now.”

The “for now” seems to settle them. The vampires glare as they walk past, but they do leave, not bothering to take their eight fallen comrades with them. The factory is cavernous in the aftermath. As soon as the last vampire is gone, Cornelia bursts towards Phil and drops beside his body. She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that the male—Dan, the female had called him—looms over her.

“Phil!” she sobs, her good hand hesitating over his forehead. 

Dan drops the stake and it clatters to the floor, rolling amongst the debris. He kneels beside Phil’s body and reaches for him; Martyn has his gun aimed at Dan’s head before he even realises he’s grabbed it.

“Don’t touch him.” Martyn’s voice shakes so much he doesn’t recognise it.

Dan scowls. “Put that away. Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage for one night?”

“What?” Cornelia glances up at Dan.

“He shot Phil.”

Cornelia gasps and spins to face him.

“It was an accident!” Martyn’s hand is shaking now, too, and he turns the gun away and flicks the safety on. Dan might be a vampire, but he’s right about this: the last thing he needs right now is to accidentally shoot Cornelia as well. “This vampire is the one who snapped his neck and killed him!”

“Did you want him to suffer?” Dan says. “He was scared! He was in pain!”

Martyn’s vision blurs as a wave of lightheadedness washes over him, but he plants his feet and doesn’t sway. The memory of arguing with Phil on the phone just a couple of hours ago plays through his mind. Phil would still be alive if Martyn had just let him go out like he’d wanted to. He had had dinner plans with…

“Dan,” Martyn whispers and his jaw drops.

“Yes?” Dan looks harried, even as he presses the back of his hand gently to Phil’s cheek, as if he’s checking his temperature.

“You’re Dan.” Martyn's voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. “But that’s not possible. You’re a vampire. Phil would never—”

“He told you about me?” 

“Only that he had a new friend he was hanging out with,” Cornelia says.

“We assumed you were a person.” 

Dan shoots him a glare. “I  _ am _ a person.”

Martyn rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“You mean that I’m not human.”

“You’re  _ not _ human.”

Cornelia shuffles on her knees and inhales sharply when she jostles her broken wrist. “This isn’t important right now.”

Dan eyes her up and down. His shoulders are still tense, but something in his face softens when he looks at her.

“You two should go.”

Martyn lets himself look at Phil and he swallows hard. His lips have already started to go blue.

“I need to call headquarters. They can send a car for Phil.”

Dan frowns, but he looks confused instead of angry now. “You can’t take him.”

Martyn snorts. “He’s my brother. Do you really think you’re going to stop me?”

“Do you really think that’s going to matter when he wakes up?”

Martyn and Cornelia exchange a glance in the sudden, startled silence. Nothing about this night has gone the way Martyn planned; his world is irrevocably changed. And this conversation isn’t helping. 

“But... he’s dead,” Cornelia finally says, gently, as if she expects Dan to be shocked by this.

“For now,” Dan says. “He’ll wake up in a couple of hours and when he does he’ll need to feed to complete the transition. Believe me, he won’t care who you are when he does.” He sounds bitter towards the end.

Everything is coming into sharp relief for Martyn. What had that female vampire said? If Dan staked himself, Phil would die? Even though Phil was already dead by then? Through a haze, he remembers Dan reaching for Phil’s mouth before he killed him. He goes cold with horror.

“Oh my god,” Martyn says. “You turned him.”

Cornelia pales and shakes her head like she can’t believe what she’s hearing, but Dan meets his gaze with defiance. 

“I saved him.”

This isn’t happening. Martyn presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries to fight back the nausea. Phil is not... he can’t be…

The thought crosses his mind that Phil will be better off if Martyn stakes him now but he pushes it away as quickly as it surfaces. Phil is his little brother. They’ve had their ups and downs, but what siblings don’t? The thought of driving a stake into Phil’s heart makes him dizzy, but leaving him with Dan—a  _ vampire _ —doesn’t sit right either. Either way, how is he supposed to face his parents after this? He’s already going to have to tell them that Phil is dead. Can he break their hearts a second time by telling them he let Phil be turned?

His mind is a mess of thoughts tumbling over each other. He can barely grasp one before it’s replaced by another. He doesn’t know what to do.

“What’s going to happen to him if we leave him with you?”

Cornelia’s voice is soft but strong and Martyn latches onto it as he looks up. Her eyes are red and shiny from withheld tears, but her back and shoulders are straight. Dan’s mouth is pressed into a hard line, but he meets her gaze head-on.

“I’ll keep him here. No one will disturb us. When he wakes up, I’ll help him complete the transition.”

She swallows hard. “And then?”

Dan shrugs. “That’s up to him.”

Cornelia’s shoulders droop and she turns to face Martyn. She often looks tired—they both do, it’s an occupational hazard—but now she looks weary in a way that seems soul-deep. She’s always been a bright spark, endlessly positive and always encouraging him to try harder to connect with Phil, but never pushing. A piece of her is going to be left broken on the floor of this factory when they leave tonight, just another thing that Martyn will have to hold himself responsible for.

“We should go,” she says.

Part of him wants to rage at her for daring to suggest that they leave Phil behind, but a bigger part goes boneless with relief. Taking this decision out of his hands might be the greatest gift she’s ever given him.

Martyn is silent as he helps her stand, but she says to Dan, “Ask him to call us when he’s... feeling better.”

Dan raises an eyebrow but jerks his head in a nod. They stumble back to the entrance, where their coats are still piled together in a messy lump. Martyn wraps Cornelia’s coat around her shoulders and stuffs his arms into his own. He hesitates over Phil’s, unsure what to do with it, before he folds it and tucks it under his arm to take with them. Phil won’t be needing it anymore.

He looks back only once and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that he never sees Phil again. Because if he does, he’ll have to choose between his brother’s life and the innocent lives he might one day take, and Martyn doesn’t know how he can ever make that choice.

* * *

Phil’s eyes are grainy behind their lids, like they get when he’s left his contacts in too long. It’s nothing compared to the ache in his joints, though. Jagged edges are digging into his back, where he’s lying on something cold and hard. There’s a smell in the air that’s smooth like melted butter.

His eyes grind open. The ceiling is so far overheard he can’t even see it in the darkness, but there’s enough moonlight coming through the broken windows that he can make out the steel walkway circling the second floor. 

He’s still in the factory, but he’s lying on the ground. He turns his head to the left and sees no one. A restless shuffle has him turning to the other side. 

Dan is sitting with his legs folded under him, his hands loosely clasped in his lap. He’s watching Phil carefully, his face blank. That’s not right. Dan is always in motion; he has the most expressive face Phil has ever seen. Phil has never seen him so still.

Phil frowns. Why is Dan here at all? Martyn and Cornelia were here, weren’t they? What …? He inhales deeply. 

“What’s that smell?” he croaks.

“Blood.”

Phil’s stomach clenches painfully; he’s suddenly aware of how dry his throat is. He props himself up on his elbows and then pushes himself into a slumped sitting position. He’s never smelled blood like this before. He looks around, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. There’s none on him that he can see, and if Dan were bleeding that much it would be obvious. 

A few metres away, a series of vampire bodies are lined up neatly on the floor, stakes still lodged in their chests. Had Martyn and Cornelia laid them out before they’d left? Why had they left without taking Phil with them?

Phil shakes his head, trying to dislodge the fuzziness that’s clouding his mind to remember how he ended up asleep on a factory floor with Dan. He had come here with Martyn and Cornelia. They had been hunting a group of vampires. It’s clear now that Martyn and Cornelia are gone. Something is pressing at the back of his mind, trying to get his attention. He’s forgotten something important.

He looks up at Dan, who stands and brushes off the seat of his jeans. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

“I followed you.”

Does that mean that Dan saw him fighting the vampires? Had he been one of them? Does he know what Phil is? Is that why they’re here alone? Does he want to kill Phil himself for using him to gain information?

Dan doesn’t seem inclined to explain. Instead, he turns and walks towards one of the steel beams. It’s then that Phil sees the man propped against it. Dan slings the man up in his arms; his legs dangle over one of Dan’s arms and his head lolls against Dan’s shoulder. Dan carries him over and lays him beside Phil. A shaft of moonlight illuminates the two, bloody puncture wounds on the right side of his neck.

Phil licks his lips at the sight of them, even as a voice inside his head is screaming about how wrong this is. He kicks himself away.

“I don’t understand.” His voice shakes. “What’s he doing here?”

“You’re in transition,” Dan says calmly, as if he explains this every day—maybe he does.

“No! I can’t be! That means that I—”

“That you died. Yes. That guy who was with you—I think he’s your brother—he shot you.”

It comes back to him in a rush. Phil’s arm twists and his fingers scramble up his back to reach the hole left by the bullet in the back of his t-shirt. The surrounding material is stiff with dried blood, but when his fingers brush the skin underneath, he finds it whole. 

Dan digs into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a blood-stained silver bullet. It also allows Phil to see the dried blood crusted on Dan’s fingers and settled into the grooves of his palm.

“I had to dig it out,” Dan says. “I’d apologise but, trust me, you didn’t want your back to heal over with it still inside. Silver hurts. But I guess you know that already.”

Dan knows. And he knows that Phil knows. There’s no point denying it now. It unlocks more of the memory. He remembers Dan appearing, forcing his blood down Phil’s throat, snapping his neck. Martyn shot him, but Dan killed him. His stomach rolls and he gasps a breath to keep his dinner down.

Dan hefts the man up by his shoulders and then leans his torso towards Phil. “Drink.”

He shakes his head violently. “No! I can’t!” This can’t be happening. There’s no way he’s been turned.

But even as he thinks it, that smell beckons to him again and he knows that it’s true. He’s in transition. His life is never going to be the same. He’s going to have to hunt innocent people if he wants to stay alive.

“If you don’t you’ll die.”

“I’m not sure why you care! You already killed me once!”

Dan heaves a weary sigh and rubs his temples. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Why do the details matter? I’m dead. End of story.”

“What is it with your family?” Dan grinds the question out. His face is tense and there are deep furrows between his brows. “I killed you quickly because I thought it was better than letting you bleed out slowly and painfully on the floor. I’m sorry if you’d have preferred the alternative. I didn’t realise masochism was your thing.”

It sounds so reasonable when Dan says it like that, but there must be more to it. Is Phil just supposed to believe that Dan killed him out of the goodness of his heart? It even sounds ridiculous!

“You were a vampire hunter,” Dan continues. “I didn’t expect you to be so squeamish.”

“I  _ am _ a vampire hunter, and it’s not about being squeamish! Vampires are monsters!”

Dan recoils and then goes very still. “Is that right? Well, this vampire burned a lot of bridges to save you tonight, Phil.” He shoves the man towards Phil, who fumbles to catch him. “Drink or don’t, I don’t care.”

He pushes himself to his feet and stalks away, leaving Phil supporting the man’s body against his chest. The scent of the blood is stronger now that it’s literally right under his nose. He wriggles his jaw against the growing ache and his eyes widen when the points of his fangs press into the inside of his lower lip. He prods at one gently with a finger and winces when it nicks the skin.

His gaze drifts back to the man in his arms and his mouth waters. It would be so easy for Phil to bend his head and drink every last drop of blood from this man’s body. The thirst is gnawing at him and he squeezes his eyes closed but it doesn’t work as a distraction. The smell is still there. Part of him wants it so badly that, even if he doesn’t drink, the memory of it is going to haunt him until he finally wastes away into nothing.

…He doesn’t want to waste away into nothing. The urge to drink is rising in him and he should fight it back. Maybe he could lock himself in that office he saw at the back of the factory and wait for it all to be over there. He’s a vampire hunter. He has a duty to protect innocent people from the monsters that are out to prey on them. How can he do that if he lets himself become one of those monsters?

Except that Dan is right—he’s not a vampire hunter anymore. Everything he’s trained for has all ended with this. His parents will be devastated, assuming Martyn even tells them the truth. If he wants to spare them the shame, he’ll tell them Phil got mauled so badly by a pack of vampires that there wasn’t a body left to bury. At least that way they can go on believing he went down fighting. He doesn’t want to know what they’d think if they could see him like this, alone on the floor of an abandoned factory, wondering if he can live with himself if he lets himself complete the transition. They would want him to do the last heroic thing he can and sacrifice his own life to save the ones he’ll take if he becomes a vampire.

But he wants to live. It’s selfish, but it’s true.

“He’ll wake up soon.” Dan’s voice drawls out of the shadows at the far wall. “You better make your choice.”

Wake up? Phil frowns and steels himself to focus closer on the man. When he does, he can feel the steady rise of the man’s chest against his own. He’s breathing. Why? Dan had bitten him, helped himself to a meal of his own if the blood is anything to go by, but hadn’t killed him. Had he left it for Phil to do? Is this some kind of vampiric right of passage?

“I don’t want to kill him,” Phil says, voice strong, because if there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s that. He’s not going to let himself kill this innocent man just so he himself can live.

Dan scoffs. “Who said anything about killing him? Just drink the blood and we’ll leave him outside, near where I found him. He’ll wake up with a headache and a couple of extra bruises and be none the wiser.”

That can’t be right. Vampires kill to survive. That’s what his parents and other hunters have always said. It’s why the hunters exist: to keep people safe. Dan makes it sound like the man is just going to get up and walk away.

“You don’t kill when you feed?”

“Of course not!” Dan sounds offended. “If we killed all the people we fed from, don’t you think someone would notice?”

That makes Phil pause. It does make a certain kind of sense, but it goes against everything he’s ever been told.

“How do I know you’re not lying to trick me?”

The silence is heavy with accusations. “I think we’ve already established that I’m not the liar here, Phil.”

The fuzziness in Phil’s mind is growing and darkness is creeping around the edges of his vision. He has to choose. Dan has told him he doesn’t have to kill this man; if he drinks and finds that he can’t live with himself as a vampire, he can just lock himself away in his flat until he dries out and then throw open the curtains. He’ll have to fight against all his survival instincts, but he can probably do it.

He nudges the man’s head to the side to expose the bite marks Dan left in his neck. They’ve already started healing over, the new skin shiny and pink in the moonlight. He licks his lips again and breathes deep, before he hesitantly leans closer. His nose brushes the skin and his eyes fall closed at the warm, sweet scent of the blood flowing underneath. Without a conscious thought from him, his mouth opens. He wavers for just one more second, teetering on the edge of what he’s about to do, and then his mouth closes on the man’s neck and he falls over the edge.

It’s ecstasy. The blood flowing down his throat is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. He clutches the man closer and takes another deep pull. At this moment, he could do anything. He’s never felt so free and he never wants it to stop. 

Except then a hand closes in his hair and tugs him back.

“That’s enough.”

Phil’s teeth dislodge from the man’s throat and he growls; Dan’s fingers tighten in warning.

“I said, that’s enough. You’ve taken what you need.” Dan crouches beside him and pulls the man into his arms, then stands. “Come on.”

Dan turns and walks towards the entrance, apparently just expecting Phil to follow him. It’s over just like that. With no ceremony at all, Phil is a vampire. 

He pushes himself to his feet and hurries after Dan, who doesn’t spare him so much as a glance. It makes Phil’s blood boil. Phil has just died and reawakened as a vampire, and Dan is strolling around like he doesn’t care at all! Sure, Phil didn’t tell Dan he was a hunter, but Dan must understand that. It’s not like it’s the sort of thing Phil can tell just anyone. Plus, Dan is supposed to be his friend. Shouldn’t he be more concerned?

“Are we going to talk about this?” Phil asks, as they step out of the factory and Dan leads him towards the far side of a dumpster piled high with bulging rubbish bags.

Dan arranges the man against the side of the dumpster, sitting him upright and leaning his head gently against the wall. He straightens and brushes off his hands, before walking off towards the road. “Talk about what?”

Phil feels like his brain short circuits. “Do you want a list? What the hell is going on?”

Dan whirls back to him. His face is blank and hard, a wall that betrays nothing. “Why don’t you tell me? Why did you make friends with me? Have you known what I am this whole time?”

Phil rocks back and forth on his heels. Part of him wants to keep it all to himself, but it’s an instinct leftover from... before. Is there any real harm in admitting the truth now? It’s not like Dan’s just going to hand the leader of his clan over to Phil or the hunters, but he also isn’t going to be content with half-answers.

“Of course I knew,” Phil finally says and Dan’s mouth tightens further. “Did you really think a hunter just bumped into and befriended a vampire in a coffee shop?”

“And you did that because... what? Killing randoms wasn’t enough for you? You wanted it to feel more personal?”

Phil recoils. Is that really the kind of person Dan thinks he is? “No!”

“Then why?”

His gaze slides away from Dan’s face. “I was going to use you for information.” He wavers and then decides he has nothing left to lose so he might as well go all-in. “I had this idea to track down and kill the leader of your clan. Everyone knows it’s the biggest clan in the south of England. Taking out your leader would get rid of the clan—the ones who haven’t created vampires of their own anyway. I thought attaching myself to one of you would make it easier to find out who your leader is.”

Dan has gone very still. When he says nothing, Phil rambles on.

“I just wanted to prove to everyone that I could do it, that I’m as good a hunter as Martyn. All the hunters take him seriously, but he’s never done anything like this. He’s probably never even thought about it—if he had, he would have said something or started putting some kind of plan together. I just wanted to be better than him for once.”

Dan takes a slow, deep breath. It shudders out of him. “So it’s all been a lie.”

“Not all of it!” Phil wraps his arms around himself. “All that stuff I told you on Halloween—that was true.”

Dan shakes his head. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you now? ‘Oh, poor Phil! His brother’s a better vampire hunter than him! Boo hoo.’ Get over it. You  _ used _ me.”

Hearing Dan throw it out like that makes Phil’s stomach roll. Yes, he did use Dan. Even when he realised that Dan actually saw him as a friend, Phil kept up the charade. Is he sorry about it? Partly. But there’s another, greater part that won’t let him forget that Dan is a vampire.

“It was all for nothing anyway,” Phil offers, as if this makes the whole situation better. “I never found the leader.”

Dan drops his head to rub his face with his hands, fingers sliding into his hair to grip it tightly. When he raises his head again, his face is expressionless, but there’s something sad about the downturn of his mouth.

“The irony,” Dan says, “is that you did. I’ve been right here the whole time.”

Phil’s mind is silent, as if it’s been wiped clean. Dan is the clan leader he’s been looking for all this time? But he’s so... ordinary. There’s nothing about him that screams “burden of responsibility”—it’s the opposite in fact. Dan walks through life like he hasn’t got a care in the world.

Phil could have killed him weeks ago. They’d been alone in Dan’s flat that one time; they’d met up countless times for coffee or dinner. If Phil had known he would have…

_ Would _ he have? Knowing Dan was going to die if Phil killed his sire was one thing and Phil can admit that he’s been struggling with it. Could he really have stood over Dan and staked him directly? Maybe in the beginning, but last week? Yesterday?

He shouldn’t be thinking this way. None of this changes what Dan is or what he’s done. If anything, Phil should feel more justified than ever. The clan in London is extensive and it spreads out of the city.

“You turned all those people?” His voice is faint, with horror or resignation, he can’t tell.

Dan hums in acknowledgement. “And now I’ve turned you, so unless you want to go off and create a vampire of your own, you’re bound to me. If I die, you die. Funny, that. I really appreciate the poetic justice.”

Dan stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans and turns to walk away.

“Wait!” Phil trails after him. “What happens now?”

“You’re just full of good ideas, Phil. You figure it out.”

* * *

Martyn’s eyes are dry and heavy from lack of sleep, and he squints against the weak sunlight filtering through the blinds. The hunting paraphernalia from the night before is still littered across the coffee table in front of him. 

He and Cornelia had gone to headquarters after they’d left the factory, to get her injuries looked after. No one had asked any questions and neither of them had offered any explanations. It wasn’t unusual for hunters to wander in, in need of medical care. Cornelia had gone straight to bed when they’d returned home; Martyn had intended to join her but he’d slumped onto the sofa and he still hasn’t moved. Cornelia had woken up a couple of hours ago. He can hear her moving around the kitchen, making tea, but she’s quieter than usual, like she’s being careful not to disturb him. It feels like someone has died.

His breath catches.

Someone  _ has _ .

He turns his phone over in his hand again. He’s done it so many times since he sat down he’s surprised the skin hasn’t rubbed raw. It was easy to put off the call to his parents at first: it was late; he didn’t want to disturb Cornelia; his parents would be asleep. But as dawn drew closer and then passed, the reasons became harder to find. He doesn’t want to tell them; it seems cruel. Right now, they’re at home having breakfast like every other day of their lives. They don’t know that the world has irrevocably changed. They don’t know that it’s Martyn’s fault. 

He pulls up his mum’s number and presses Call before he can stop himself. If he doesn’t call now, he might sit on this sofa forever and never do it. He has to rip the plaster off now if they have any hope of moving forward later.

“Hello, love! You’re up early!” The familiar chirp of her voice sends a rush of warmth through him, followed swiftly by a wave of nausea at what he’s about to tell her.

His voice rasps when he starts to speak, so he stops, clears his throat and then tries again. “Hi, Mum.”

“Is everything alright?”

He can picture that narrow-eyed stare she always wears when she knows her sons are keeping something from her and she’s trying to wheedle the truth out of them.

His head drops back against the sofa and he stares up at the ceiling. Now or never.

“Cornelia, Phil and I went out last night. I’d heard that there was a group of vampires in a factory on the outskirts of the city.”

It feels like all the sound in the world has died away, leaving only the pounding of his heart and her breathing through the phone. He presses his eyes tight against the tears welling in them.

“What happened?” his mum’s voice is deceptively light, like she’s asking about the weather. Like she doesn’t already know something’s wrong.

“I underestimated how many hunters we would need and we were ambushed.”

“Cornelia?”

He knows that she only asks about Cornelia first because, as much as his mum loves Cornelia, this is the lesser of two evils. If something has happened to Cornelia, his mum will still be sad, but it’ll be a much easier pain to bear. Martyn will never be able to choose between Cornelia or Phil, but he wishes he could spare his mum the pain he’s about to cause her.

“A broken wrist, and cuts and bruises.”

The silence lengthens, so taut it feels like it’s vibrating between them.

“And Phil?”

He should have told her outright. Having her ask the question makes it exponentially harder to say it out loud. There’s nothing he can say or do that will make this better. 

“He’s dead.”

The sound she makes isn’t human. Crossed between a wail and a sob, it sounds like it’s been pulled from the deepest pit of her. Martyn has never known pain like hers. Phil was his brother, but he knows on an instinctive level that what he feels is nothing compared to this.

Hearing his mum crying snaps something in him, and he takes a gasping breath around a sob that claws up his throat. His cheeks are wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying.

There’s a fumbling on the other end of the phone and then his dad’s voice comes through, clear but distant; they must have put him on speaker.

“How did this happen?” his dad asks, voice tight.

“It’s my fault.” Martyn jumps when fingertips gently brush the back of his hand; he hadn’t noticed Cornelia come in and sit beside him. Her eyes are swollen and red. “Even before we realised it was an ambush, I thought the three of us could handle it. They swarmed us and I... One of them grabbed Phil. I was just trying to clear a path and he got caught in the middle. I... I shot him.”

There’s an ache that comes from knowing this that Martyn doesn’t think will ever go away. For the rest of his life, he’ll have to wake up every morning and remember that he killed his own brother. He can’t lie about it, not even to spare his parents pain. He doesn’t deserve their forgiveness or understanding. He deserves to be punished.

His mother’s breath hitches and everything goes eerily silent. Martyn is torn between wanting them to yell and scream at him, because he deserves their rage, and wanting them to soothe him and say it’s not his fault, but he knows that’s not likely. He and Phil have never doubted that their parents love them, but their whole lives have been about hunting vampires. The earliest bedtime stories he can remember were about heroes slaying the monsters that were hiding in plain sight. He was encouraged towards sports that would make him fast and agile, and was taught how to play chess by a grandfather who wanted him to understand the consequences of the battlefield. Even as children he and Phil were expected to take responsibility for their actions: if they were old enough to know better, then they should do better.

Even with all that, it was a house full of happiness and love. His mum would sing as she tried to bake another batch of biscuits on a Saturday morning; his dad would rustle the newspaper while he pretended he wasn’t watching the morning cartoons with his sons. Martyn and Phil would divide the last of the “good” cereal—the sugary one they were only allowed to have on weekends as a treat—as equally in half as they could manage, so they could each have the same amount. Martyn has never been scared of monsters; he’s never had a reason to be. He’s always felt completely safe knowing Phil was at his back and his parents were waiting at home to hear from him.

“There’s more,” he says, because he’s come this far and not telling them the whole truth won’t change it.

“Did they take him?”

His dad spits out the word “they”, leaving no question as to who he’s referring to.

“Not exactly.” Martyn draws in a shaky breath. “They turned him.”

Nothing. The world has stopped. They’ll be stuck in this moment forever. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. It can’t be worse than getting off this sofa, having a shower, and going about his day like everything is exactly the same.

“No.” His voice is hard and uncompromising, like it used to be when Martyn and Phil tried to put up a fight about ten more minutes on the Playstation before bed.

“I’m sorry,” Martyn says, so softly he can barely hear himself.

Cornelia’s hand tightens around his. The callouses on her fingers are rough against his palm, but they’re as familiar to him as his own and that in itself is a comfort. Even if his parents never speak to him again, he is not alone.

The silence stretches down the phone between them, broken only by the sound of his mum crying in the background.

Then his dad said, “We’re coming down. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

* * *

The pitter-patter of rain against the balcony window isn’t atmospheric enough for Dan’s mood. It should be storming, the heavy grey sky a battleground of blustery wind, torrential rain and jagged lightning, set against a symphony of thunder. Instead there’s just a gentle afternoon shower and the light grey clouds look fluffy and soft. He can even see where the clouds end on the horizon and the pale autumn blue of the sky reappears.

It’s been almost 24 hours since Phil called and said they would have to postpone their dinner plans. They’re probably cancelled now. Dan doesn’t foresee them catching up over sushi anytime soon.

Dan curls deeper into the corner of the sofa and takes a sip of coffee from the mug in his hands. He winces—it’s stone cold. How long ago did he make it? How long has he been sitting here? How long is he going to wallow like this?

He’s allowed a good bit of wallowing, he thinks, as he forces himself to his feet and into the kitchen. He pours the leftover coffee down the sink and flips the switch on the kettle to start it boiling for a fresh cup. 

All that time Dan had spent walking around thinking he’d finally found a friend, Phil had been using him. Had been planning to kill him even, or was at least willing to let him die to accomplish his own goals.

Would Phil really have done it? That’s the question that chased itself around and around Dan’s head while he lay in bed early that morning. After weeks of conversation and swapping stories about their lives, would Phil actually have looked Dan in the eye and put a stake in his heart?

Yes, he thinks ruthlessly. The kettle rumbles and he yanks it off the stand. Boiling water sloshes over the edge of the mug and onto the counter when he pours. A Phil that can sit on Dan’s sofa and watch TV and eat pizza and pretend that he’s Dan’s friend is a Phil that can kill him.

_ Could _ kill him. He doubts Phil will go through with it, now that Dan’s death means Phil’s.

How did he not see it? Dan warms his hands around the mug as he wanders back to the sofa. Was he really so desperate that he didn’t even question why Phil wanted anything to do with him in the first place?

He takes a sip and winces again, this time when he scalds his tongue. He just can’t win.

His phone rings merrily from the coffee table, startling in the silence. He leans forward just enough to see that it’s Phil calling. He can’t tell if he’s surprised. Ava always just used to show up without warning, and that’s probably a thing of the past. Phil was the only one who ever called him, but after last night Dan was half-expecting to never hear from him again. 

He’s usually good about helping the new vampires he turns, because he remembers how scary and overwhelming the world was for him in the beginning, even if he does end up letting them wander off as they choose later. Something in him wants to watch Phil suffer and struggle; he even entertains the thought of tracking him down and watching him from a distance. 

But then he remembers his promise to Phil before he killed him. “You’re going to be okay,” he had said. Does everything he learnt afterwards negate that, or does he hold himself accountable?

He thinks the matter might have been decided for him when the phone rings out, but then it immediately starts up again. He answers it just so he won’t have to think about it anymore.

“What?” There’s no reason to let Phil think they’re on friendly terms.

“I have questions.”

Dan gingerly takes another sip of coffee. “Do you?”

There’s a beat of silence, in which Dan imagines Phil is battling with himself—is he, a former vampire hunter, really going to accept help from a vampire he had sworn to kill?

“Can I go outside? I used to see you outside during the day all the time. How do I do that?”

Dan barks out a laugh before he can stop himself. “You just... go outside. I assume you have a door. Use that.”

“But... the sun!”

“First of all, it’s cloudy right now. Second of all, you transitioned less than 24 hours ago. You won’t need to feed for at least another week before you start seeing and feeling the effects of withdrawal.”

“Oh.” Another beat of silence. “So I don’t have to... feed... every day?”

“Not right now. The older you get, as in, the further you get from life, the more regularly you’ll have to drink blood to supplement your lifeforce. I met a vampire in Egypt once who was so old he had to drink blood every few hours.”

“And people were okay with that?!”

“Oh yeah. He had a town he was sort of the guardian of. The people who lived there let him drink from them in exchange for protection. I think they operated on a rota system and when they got too old or unhealthy, they were just removed from the line-up.”

Phil splutters and Dan wishes he could be there to see Phil’s face. There must be nothing more horrifying for a hunter as the idea of a whole town of people just offering themselves up to a vampire like a buffet.

“How often do  _ you _ feed?” Phil asks, when he’s recovered control of himself.

“Every few days is all I really need, but I usually drink more often, just in case. You don’t want to be caught somewhere and then find you’re at the end of your rope.” Dan frowns. “You really don’t have any idea how this works?”

“Should I?” Phil sounds offended, as if the idea of understanding how vampires live is too much to expect of him.

“You were a vampire hunter! Don’t they cover this in classes or something?”

Phil snorts. “It’s not like there’s a degree for it. It’s more like a family business—we get on-the-job training.”

“Well, you might want to speak to the training officer. They’re clearly using outdated information.”

“I can’t believe you’re joking at a time like this.”

Dan’s skin prickles. Isn’t that what Ava had accused him of? Not being serious enough? If she had just listened to him, none of them would be in this mess.

“I don’t know what you mean.” He keeps his voice even and takes a noisy slurp of coffee just so Phil really knows how little he cares about this conversation. “I’m fine. Your life is your problem.”

“You  _ gave me _ this life! I didn’t ask for you to do this to me!”

“So you’d rather be dead?”

“Better dead than a vampire!”

The more Phil says it, the less it means, like he’s a child repeating something he heard an adult say once.

“You have to get over this,” Dan says. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it and I’ve already told you that you don’t have to kill anyone. What’s your problem? Did you like being a hunter that much? Because that’s not the vibe I was getting.”

“At least I had a purpose!”

“Murdering people.”

“Saving innocent lives!”

Dan’s sigh leaves him in a rush. “Look,” he bites out, “I’m sorry, okay? I—” 

He cuts himself off before he can admit that watching Phil die might have killed him too. This is not the time nor the place for that kind of honesty.

“You seemed scared and I knew I could save you from that.”

Phil is quiet for so long that Dan has to check to see that the call hasn’t disconnected.

“Phil? Are you—?”

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.” He sounds defeated. “I come from generations of hunters on both sides of my family. And now I’m the thing they’re supposed to be hunting. I’m never going to see my parents again. What if Martyn and Cornelia find me one night? They took an oath to kill any vampire they come across and I know Martyn takes his duty seriously. Even if he does let me go, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re all going to grow old and die and I’ll still be here.”

It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, Phil’s right about that. Dan had kept a wary distance from his parents after he’d killed his brother, not that it had made much difference in the end. His father had disappeared shortly afterwards, and Dan had never been able to find out what happened to him; his mother had succumbed to a disease a few years later. That had been that. Dan had been well and truly alone in the world.

“You learn to live with it,” he says, trying to be reassuring, because as angry as he is about what Phil did, he still remembers the ache of watching his mother’s body be tossed into a pauper’s grave.

“But don’t you get lonely?”

“Well.” Dan clears his throat. “I had...people.”

Phil. Finally, after an eternity, he had Phil. He thought he did anyway. His chest aches with the knowledge that it was all a lie. 

“Not always, though. Is... is that why you turned all those people?”

“Something like that.” He doesn’t really feel like trying to explain how he drained his brother dry right now.

“I felt bad about it, you know,” Phil blurts out.

Dan’s face scrunches in confusion. “About what?”

“About knowing you were going to die.”

Dan stills. It’s not an apology so he takes the time to think over Phil’s words. 

“But not enough to not go through with it.”

“I have a job to do.”

“You  _ had _ a job to do. You can do whatever you want now. Even go outside.”

“I... no, I can’t. How do I know I won’t go crazy and attack someone?”

Is this something Phil’s actually worried about? “Because you wouldn’t do that anyway? Being a vampire doesn’t change who you are, it just changes how you live. Sure, some vampires have attacked people, but they were probably really low on blood or sociopaths anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“You last fed less than 24 hours ago. This is the time you’ll have the most self-control. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.”

“Right. Well. I guess I’ll go out then.”

“Great. You do that.”

Dan presses End Call before he can say anything else. He’s already strode far enough from his anger and reassuring Phil further isn’t going to help that. Phil doesn’t get a pass just because he’s having an existential crisis. It’s practically a rite of passage for vampires anyway. It doesn’t make Phil special and it definitely doesn’t mean they’re just going to sweep his betrayal under the rug.

There’s a part of Dan that wants to be out there with him, though. He wants to watch Phil’s face as he takes in all the sights, sounds and smells he’s never known existed before. He wants to teach him how to hunt the vampire way and take him all over the world to show him all the cities he thought he’d never get to see.

Dan was telling the truth when he told Ava he wasn’t planning to turn Phil, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about what it might be like if he did.

* * *

Tolkien wrote, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door,” and Phil has to wonder if Tolkien himself was a vampire, because surely no one else has ever felt this kind of hesitance staring at their own front door.

He takes a shaky breath, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the endless thoughts about everything that could go wrong when he’s away from the safety of his flat. Anything could happen out there. Maybe Dan lied and Phil will burn to a crisp the moment the sun hits him. Maybe  _ Twilight _ actually got something right and he’ll cross paths with someone who smells so good he’ll be compelled to drink all their blood right there outside a Boots. Maybe it won’t even take that much. Maybe he’ll just see a human and want to kill them under his own steam.

Dan is right about one thing: the longer he hides inside the harder it will be to go out. And he  _ will _ have to go out at some point, if he wants to keep himself alive. The drinking blood is something he’ll just ignore until he can’t put it off any longer. For now, he has to focus on getting out of his flat. It’s better to just do it now before he can convince himself that he really does want to wait here until he dries up and turns to dust.

He steels himself, squares his shoulders and steps out into the hall. He locks the door behind him and takes the stairs down as casually as he can, because this is just another ordinary trip on another ordinary day in Phil’s ordinary life.

And then he steps onto the street and gasps, rocking back on his heels. Nothing about this is ordinary.

The air is awash with the mingled scents of petrol fumes, perfume, cologne and the Indian takeaway down the street. The tap of shoes on the footpath is like pounding thunder, but there are so many people around that it’s just a constant rumble of noise. His eyesight has never been better. The faces on the opposite side of the street are as clear as the ones of the people walking past him.

Is it like this all the time? How do vampires do this? All Phil wants is to go back to bed—he’s had enough of the outside for one day, but that feels like giving up, and he doesn’t want to have to tell Dan he failed at just walking around the block. He tucks his clenched fists into the pockets of his coat and sets off up the street. He’s torn between trying to ignore everything and everyone around him, and focusing on it all to test his willpower. Just walking down the street doesn’t make him want to tear into that woman’s neck but would that change if he got too close? Dan never showed any interest in drinking Phil’s blood when they were alone together, but maybe he wanted to and was just really good at hiding it.

He turns into a park and his senses are easier to bear there. The cars are still too loud and he never knew grass had a smell outside spring, but there are fewer people hanging around this late in the year so it’s less overwhelming. He’s not ashamed to admit that he wishes Dan was there. Dan is a walking, talking distraction, and he knows how this whole vampire thing works. But Dan is—rightfully—angry. Phil will understand if he never wants to see or speak to him again. Sure, he took Phil’s call earlier and he might help Phil find his feet, but he probably only did that out of a sense of duty. Once Phil can cope on his own Dan will leave him to it and then Phil will be alone.

As a kid, Phil could make friends with anyone. He had an ease about him that made other kids feel comfortable and a quirkiness that made him fun to be around. That had all fallen away as he’d gotten older, though. He’d grown into a teenager who was suddenly weighed down by the expectations of his family. He couldn’t afford to be easy and quirky when there were vampires stalking the streets that Phil would one day be expected to hunt and kill. When faced with that, the gossip of his peers about who had seen whom making out behind the gym just hadn’t seemed important, and a distance had grown between them until Phil realised he didn’t really have any friends at all. 

Dan is the first person in years that Phil has actually wanted to spend time talking to. They don’t even need to be talking; sharing space is enough. Dan has been like a shot of adrenaline to Phil’s life, with his endless DVDs and his love of food. He went to the effort of putting together a real costume for a Halloween party he didn’t even want to go to, because if he was going to go anyway, he might as well do it properly. Dan doesn’t do anything that he won’t enjoy, whereas Phil doesn’t do anything he isn’t supposed to.

And now Phil’s gone and messed it all up. Losing Dan and all his joy now is going to be worse than if Phil had never known it existed at all. 

Eternity suddenly feels impossibly long.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out before perching on the edge of a nearby bench. It’s Cornelia again. She’s been texting him all day, asking if he’s alright, if there’s anything she can do, if he wants to talk about what happened. He hasn’t replied to a single one. What is he supposed to say? Last night they walked into a factory, he died and now he’s a vampire. There’s not much more to it than that.

Another text appears just as he’s reaching to turn off the screen.

_ Please reply. I’m really worried about you. _

He chews his lower lip and brings up the keyboard.

_ I’m fine. I’ve just got a lot to figure out _ .

_ You know Martyn and I are both here for you. We just want you to be okay. _

He raises an eyebrow. He could believe it of Cornelia—she’s always just wanted him to be happy. But Martyn? They’ll be on different sides of the fight now, as far as Martyn is concerned, because Martyn is too good a hunter to let himself be swayed by any lingering feelings of brotherhood.

_ Yeah _ , he types, because he doesn’t want to fight with her too,  _ of course. Are you okay? Any injuries? _

_ Nothing serious. I’ll mend. I have to go now but let me know if you need anything, okay? _

_ I will _ .

He won’t, he thinks as he slides his phone back into his pocket. He can’t be friends with Cornelia now, because she’ll have to lie to Martyn, his parents and everyone at headquarters to do it. He won’t put her in that position. The best thing he can do for all of them is disappear. That way there’s no danger that they’ll run into each other one night. Maybe he can convince Dan to help him up to that point. Maybe he’ll be happier to lend a hand if he knows it’ll get Phil out of his hair quicker. It’s not an appealing solution, but it _ is _ a solution. This way, they can all have what they want.

Well. His family and Dan can have what they want. Phil wants to keep his family and Dan in his life, but now that he’s a vampire and Dan knows that Phil lied to him, that doesn’t seem likely. Phil will have to settle for helping the people he cares about get what they want and need, even if that means disappearing from their lives.

He stands and turns back towards the entrance of the park, ready to head home now. He’s just stepped out from under the shade of a tree when the clouds break and a shaft of light falls across his face.

He freezes... but nothing happens. His skin doesn’t burn; his face doesn’t melt away. It’s just warm. He closes his eyes and turns his face up into the light. He doesn’t fight his smile. He feels guilty thinking it, but drinking blood for the rest of his immortal life doesn’t sound so bad if it means he still gets to have this.

* * *

Martyn can’t remember when he or Cornelia last dusted.

It’s a stupid thing to be thinking about at a time like this, but his parents rarely visit London and now they’re on their way up in the lift of Martyn’s building. He doesn’t want his mum to know that one of her sons is dead and the other one lives like a slob.

Under Cornelia’s careful instruction he lays out the tea things on the coffee table and then hurriedly wipes a tissue over the nearest surfaces. There’s a knock at the door and he smoothes a hand over his hair as he goes to answer it. He has to take a deep breath before he pulls it open to reveal them.

His mum’s eyes are red and puffy, like she’s been crying all the way to London, but his dad’s face is hard, from the deep valleys in his brow to the sharp peak of his chin. He claps Martyn on the shoulder as he steps inside and then his mum wraps her arms around his middle and squeezes. It’s one of her Big Hugs—that’s what he and Phil have always called them. Kath Lester is no stranger to hugs but on important days she always holds tighter and longer. She dishes them out on birthdays and holidays, and now, today. They’ve always made Martyn feel a little bit more capable. This is the first time he feels like she’s holding onto him for her sake as well as his own.

“Come inside, Mum,” he says, gently nudging her further away from the door. “There’s tea.”

It’s common knowledge in England that tea makes everything better. This will be the ultimate test.

She sniffs, nods and follows his dad into the lounge, with Martyn bringing up the rear. His dad is already sitting in the armchair and Cornelia is deftly preparing the tea with one hand when Martyn enters the room. His mum sits on the end of the sofa closest to her husband; Martyn takes the empty seat between her and Cornelia.

They spend the first five minutes sipping their tea in silence. Martyn itches to break it but he’s the one in the wrong here. None of this would have happened if he’d been smarter and done his job properly. But he can only wait so long and there’s still no sign that either of his parents are going to say anything.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, because that seems like a good place to start.

His mum purses her lips tight and her head jerks in a nod. “I know.”

There’s no “It’s okay” or “It’s not your fault”, because clearly it isn’t and it is. There’s no point wasting time on useless platitudes.

“Explain how you were ambushed,” his dad says, meeting his gaze for the first time since they arrived.

At least this is familiar. Martyn has been reporting to his dad since he was a child. When they went on trips or holidays as a family, his dad would ask him to mentally catalogue the things they did and saw. When they got home or back to their hotel at night, Martyn would have to report on what he had seen and done, and anything that had grabbed his attention. It had felt like a game at the time—what detail could he find that would make his dad give that rare nod of approval? When Martyn became a hunter, reporting to his dad was just something he was expected to do.

Doing it now feels different. There’s a hollow space inside him where the satisfaction used to sit, and it seems to widen with every moment that passes without even a hint of grief from his dad. Doesn’t he care at all? One of his sons is dead, turned into a vampire, and he wants to talk about the ambush?

It’s not worth the fight so Martyn straightens his shoulders and says, “I got word that a group of vampires was hiding out in a factory about half an hour outside the CBD. We scoped the place out and didn’t see anything, so we went inside. One of them greeted us and then about 20 others joined her. We were surrounded.”

“Why were you outnumbered so greatly? Where were the other hunters?”

Martyn drops his gaze. “There were no others. It was just me, Cornelia and Phil. I wasn’t expecting there to be so many of them.”

“How many of them were you expecting?”

“Ten, sir.”

“And you still thought it was a good idea to go in with only Cornelia and Phil to back you up?”

“The brief from headquarters said most of the vampires would be recent transitions. They shouldn’t have had much experience.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t get lucky. It’s a miracle the two of you got away.”

Martyn’s hands clench around his mug. “Yes, sir.”

“What about Phil?” His mum’s voice is hoarse but steady.

“Kath,” Cornelia says, leaning across Martyn towards her, “do you really want—?”

Her eyes shine but she nods. “Please. I want to know exactly what happened. Not knowing makes it worse.”

“We were managing to hold our own at first,” Martyn says. “Phil made the first kill. But they overwhelmed us. Cornelia got separated from the two of us; a group of them had her completely surrounded. I pulled out my gun and fired to disperse them. Then I heard Phil cry out. The female who had greeted us had a hold of him and was dragging him closer. I tried to get a shot at her—I thought maybe that would stun her enough for him to get away—but there were vampires everywhere. I hit Phil instead.”

His mum’s hands shake as she raises her mug to swallow a gulp of tea. “How did he become a—? Why did he have vampire blood in his system?”

“One of the vampires there saw Phil get shot. He fed Phil his blood and then broke his neck.”

Her head tilts to the side, her curiosity shining through her grief. “But why? Did he think Phil could be another member of their ranks? Did he not know how long it takes vampires to turn?”

Martyn glances at Cornelia and meets her gaze quickly before they both look away. It’s not quick enough for his dad to miss.

“What?” he barks. “If there’s more, you two had better say it now.”

“The vampire who turned Phil,” Martyn starts and then doesn’t know how to continue; he’s still not sure he fully understands it himself. “Well... he…”

“His name is Dan.” Cornelia’s voice is soft but steady. “He and Phil are friends.”

His mum’s eyes widen; his dad’s mouth drops open and he turns a violent shade of red.

“No son of mine would be friends with one of those monsters!”

Cornelia’s fingers clench in the sofa cushion and she sighs quietly through her nose. “Except that he was. Phil had told us about him, he just never said Dan was a vampire.”

“Dan seemed pretty angry, though,” Martyn cuts in. “I don’t think he knew that Phil knew what he was.”

“Stop using its name!” His dad pushes himself to his feet to pace on the other side of the coffee table.

Cornelia’s jaw tightens like it does when they’re arguing and she’s trying not to say something she’ll regret later. “He helped Martyn and me get away!”

“For a reason, I’m sure,” his dad says. “Vampires don’t help humans, and this one killed Phil.”

Martyn is struck by the memory of Dan the night before, hunched over Phil’s dead body. “‘I saved him’,” he had said, so firmly and without hesitation, like he had really believed it. It’s that that forces Martyn to speak up, because Dan might be a vampire, but Martyn’s not going to let him take the fall for something that will always circle back to him.

“Phil would have died anyway,” Martyn says. “I shot him. He was bleeding out. We never would have been able to get him back to headquarters or even to a hospital in time. It doesn’t matter if D— if the vampire ended his life or not.”

“Then you should have staked the vampire then and there. You could have made it up to your brother that way. Instead you let him get turned into a vampire and left him to go out and murder innocent people. You failed twice over. Three, if you count going into that factory in the first place.”

“Nigel!” his mum gasps. Her hand closes around Martyn’s wrist in a gesture that’s probably supposed to be comforting.

Martyn feels like he’s been punched in the gut. There’s a numbness washing over him that he’s never felt before and doesn’t know what to do with. Pleasing his parents isn’t something he’s ever really had to think about; vampire hunting and all its related activities have always come naturally to him. So his father’s disappointment and his mother’s grief? Knowing he has caused them? It’s a pain dwarfed only by the memory of seeing Dan break Phil’s neck.

“We can’t let this stand,” his dad says. “We’re going to find that vampire who turned Phil and we’re going to kill it. That’s the best we can do now.”

Cornelia gasps. “But Phil—!”

“Phil wouldn’t want to live this way.” He casts a hard look over at Martyn. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Martyn?”

Cornelia’s gaze is burning into the side of his face; from the corner of his eye he can see his mum’s fingers wringing themselves pink in her lap.

He gives a short nod. “Yes, I’ll help you.”

* * *

Phil wants Dan to help him, but he doesn’t want to make a nuisance of himself. He waits five days and pushes his tolerance to what he thinks is the limit before he calls Dan again. In the dimness of early evening, he paces the length of his lounge room, a tightness building under his skin. He had opened a curtain this morning, yanking it across the rail without a second thought, and jumped back from the window with a hiss when heat had prickled over his hand. It wasn’t unbearable or even painful—he probably wasn’t old enough for that yet—but it had been an uncomfortable reminder that he couldn’t take things for granted anymore.

“I was wondering if you would call,” Dan says, by way of greeting.

“...What would you have done if I hadn’t?”

“Called you myself probably—I can’t just let you run amok through the city without supervision. But I wanted to see how long you could push it.”

“Did I meet your expectations?”

“You lasted longer than I thought you would. Congratulations.”

“So what now? How do I…?”

“...Hunt people?”

Phil nods reluctantly. “Yeah.”

“Text me your address. I’ll meet you outside, but don’t come down until I’ve arrived.”

With that, Dan hangs up. Apparently they don’t do goodbyes anymore. That’s fine. Phil had never shared goodbyes with Martyn either and that had never bothered him.

He texts Dan his address and then goes to his bedroom to change. Grabbing one of his black hunting t-shirts from the drawer makes his stomach clench but he figures it will work just as well for hunting humans as it had for hunting vampires. He avoids looking at his closet as much as he can, trying not to think about the hunting gear still stashed in the false bottom, but it just means his gaze lands on the rose still on his bedside table. It’s properly wilted now, petals dried at the edges, littering the table around the glass; the water is a murky brown.

It doesn’t seem possible that Halloween was only a couple of weeks ago. Surely an eternity has passed since then. He and Dan had stood above that dancing horde and drank their cocktails, and Phil had told him all that stuff about his childhood. He can admit now that he’d grown more attached to Dan than he should have. It just doesn’t seem fair that, now he knows it, he has to lose him. In the last week he’s lost his family, his friends, his job and his life. Does he really have to lose Dan too? 

His phone buzzes with Dan’s text and Phil goes out to meet him. He’s practiced going outside in the last few days and with each trip the anxiety has lessened, but it’s back in full force now. As he steps out onto the street, he clenches his fists to hide the shaking and tries to swallow back the rising nausea. He’s not actually going to hunt a human and drink their blood... is he? After committing his life to protecting theirs, he’s just going to stalk one down like prey? Because he doesn’t want to die? Has he always been this selfish or does the vampire transition process flip some kind of self-preservation switch?

Dan is leaning against the wall to the right of the entrance. One heel is bouncing off the footpath and he’s drumming a beat only he can hear on his thighs. A young woman shoots him a glance and a smile as she passes. Dan smiles in return.

Phil’s not blind—Dan is attractive—but seeing someone else notice it makes something unfurl in him. His eyes narrow and follow her as she continues up the street.

“Should we try for her?” Phil asks, when he feels Dan come up beside him.

“Definitely not. Women are more observant than men; they’re more likely to notice if they’re being followed. Men are bigger and can put up more of a fight, but they’re easier targets overall.”

Phil’s mouth pulls to the side in disappointment but he follows when Dan jerks his head in the opposite direction. “Who then?”

Dan raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “You think I’m going to give you all the answers? You used to be a hunter. You tell me.”

It feels like one of those questions the teachers used to ask in school, the ones they asked because they expected him to know the answer even though they also knew he hadn’t done the homework. The difference is that it’s Dan testing him and that makes Phil want to try. He’s not completely useless, after all. 

Phil studies the people around them. It’s a Wednesday evening and almost everyone around them looks like they’ve finished work for the day, so they’re either heading home or out for dinner. Taking Dan’s advice, he ignores the women and spots a homeless man sitting out of the way across the street. He seems ideal: male, roughly middle-aged, invisible in the way that all homeless people are to those around them.

Phil nudges Dan with his elbow. “Him?”

Dan’s jaw tightens and he shoots a dark look over his shoulder at Phil. “No. He’s probably not healthy enough to survive it, for one. And for two, don’t you think he’s got enough to deal with?”

That stings.

“I never expected someone like you to have morals.”

Dan snorts. “Someone like me. That’s rich, coming from you. Try again.”

Phil rolls his eyes but doesn’t complain as they continue walking. He inspects everyone they pass but tries to be more subtle about it when one man catches him staring and glares. Just when he’s starting to think he might have to swallow his pride and ask Dan for some guidance, a group of young men step out of a pub not too far ahead of them. They call out raucous goodbyes to each other and split off in separate directions. One man crosses the road and heads off on his own. He’s not drunk but he’s walking in that careful way of the extremely tipsy.

“Him,” Phil says and satisfaction warms him when Dan nods.

They cross the road and hurry to close most of the distance between them and the man. Dan holds out a hand so Phil knows to hang a few metres back. If the man turns around he probably won’t be concerned about them being there, but the intensity of Phil’s gaze might put him off.

Phil leans in to whisper in Dan’s ear. “So how do we... you know?”

Dan lets out a soft sigh. “Parks are good if they’re not too crowded and you’ve got good tree cover. There’s nothing near here, though. You’ll want to use that alleyway coming up.”

Phil scans the street ahead of them. They’re approaching the alley alarmingly fast. What if he screws up? What if he can’t go through with it?

“Listen to me.” Dan’s voice is so serious, so completely out of character, that Phil snaps to attention. “When I tell you to do it, don’t hesitate. If you give him a chance to scream or call for help, we’ll get caught. Do you understand?”

Phil nods, although his stomach is churning. He understands just fine; it’s the thought of going through with it that’s the problem. Once he does this there really will be no going back. Sure, he’s a vampire anyway, but drinking from a human he’s stalked and brought down himself makes it feel more real. Last week Dan had brought the man to him and told him to drink if he wanted to live and Phil had. This has to be his decision now. This will make him a real vampire, in all the ways he’s been taught to hate.

“I’m going to distract him and nudge him towards the alley,” Dan continues. “You get him in and cover his mouth.”

Phil doesn’t have time to respond because Dan is already taking a couple of jogging steps ahead of him and calling out, “Hey! Excuse me!”

Phil quickens his pace to keep up, moving to the man’s other side.

The man spins towards Dan just as they step up to him. 

“Oh, sorry!” Dan reaches out to close a friendly hand around the man’s elbow. “You look exactly like my friend Rob from the back! I thought for sure you were him.” So subtly that Phil only notices because he’s watching for it, Dan presses the man back towards the alley. Phil moves in time with them.

The man chuckles. “My name  _ is _ Rob! But you’ve got the wrong one, mate.”

Dan fakes a laugh. “What a coincidence!”

Rob looks around when Dan gets him into the mouth of the alley and the light dims. “Hey, what’s—?”

Phil grabs Rob’s other elbow and yanks him into the alley, closing a hand over his mouth to muffle his yell. His reflexes must kick in, because without a thought he spins them around and presses Rob’s chest into the wall. He pulls Rob’s head back against his shoulder, exposing the long line of his throat.

There’s no hesitation in him at the sight of it. His instincts are roaring. He can hear the lightning-fast beat of the blood pumping in Rob’s veins. That sweet, buttery smell is wafting into the air.

Dan steps close to block the view from the street and Phil bends his head and bites deep into the pulse point. Blood gushes into his mouth, warm and thick. The small part of his brain that’s been set aside for paying attention to his surroundings notices Rob go limp in his arms.

Panicked, he pulls back and jerks Rob’s lolling head around to him.

“He’s fine,” Dan says, sounding faint through the roaring in Phil’s ears. “The saliva knocks them out. Keep going. You need more.”

It’s much harder to bite down a second time, now that it’s a choice and not instinct. Rob’s neck is a mess of blood and torn flesh. Phil closes his eyes, tastes the blood lingering behind his teeth and lets the smell of it unspool in his nose, then he leans in and closes his mouth over the puncture wounds. He sucks hard, savouring the pull of the blood across his tongue, until Dan’s hand tightens on his shoulder.

“That’s enough.”

Phil raises his head. The world is spinning, bright where it had been dark, loud where it had been muted. He squeezes his eyes shut in an attempt to fight off the dizziness.

“You’ll be alright.” Dan’s voice is calm and warm by his ear. “It’s overwhelming the first few times. You’ll get used to it.”

Dan waits for him to open his eyes and then says, “You have to heal the wounds. Give them a few licks and they’ll start to close over.”

Phil does as he’s told and then Dan helps him arrange Rob in a seated position against the wall. It’s only seeing him propped there, his chin resting against his chest, that drives home what Phil’s just done. He takes a gasping breath and turns away to lean his forehead against the opposite wall. His head is spinning again and he might be sick, but he forces the feeling down.

“Are you okay?”

A laugh bubbles up and bursts out of him before he can stop it. There’s an edge of hysteria to his voice that he’s never heard before.

“Phil?” Dan draws his name out in concern. “What’s—?”

“What am I doing?” Rob’s body is behind him, but Phil covers his face with his hands to block out the rest of the alley too. “What have I done? I don’t want to die, but this goes against everything I’ve spent my whole life fighting. I shouldn’t be doing this. My family would be so disappointed.”

“They wouldn’t be happy you’re still alive?”

Phil huffs a harsh laugh. “They’d be the first ones to stake me if they got the chance. I never should have completed the transition in the first place.”

“You didn’t want to die. That’s human.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

Dan sighs. He sounds tired; maybe he would prefer if Phil wasn’t around too. Phil’s clearly brought him more trouble than he bargained for and Phil can’t blame him for being over it.

“Let’s get out of here, okay? We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves if someone looks down here while they’re walking by.”

Dan curls a hand around Phil’s elbow and drags him out the opposite end of the alley. Phil stumbles along in his wake, not paying attention to where Dan is going until he leads them into a burger shop. It’s small, with a long counter along the right wall and a line of tables along the left and at the back. Apart from the young man behind the counter and the couple of people in the kitchen, there are only two others, sitting at a table by the door.

Dan steps up and orders a veggie burger with large chips to share, and then he and the man behind the counter turn to Phil expectantly.

“Oh.” He holds up a hand to signal that he’s fine. “That’s okay, I don’t need—”

“Come on,” Dan says and waves his wallet. “I’m paying and you deserve a burger.” When Phil hesitates, he continues, “If you don’t order, I’ll just choose something for you.”

He knows Dan will, so he scans the menu board and orders a hamburger with bacon, because there’s nothing bacon can’t fix. Dan pays and then leads them to a table squashed in the corner at the back of the shop.

After a moment of silence, Phil starts folding down the corners of the napkin in front of him.

“Did you enjoy hunting vampires?” Dan speaks quietly, but with the sizzles and roars from the kitchen, and so few people in the shop, there’s little chance of them being overheard.

Phil glances up at him, startled. “Umm…”

“Have you missed it this week?”

The question pulls Phil up short. The truth, the one he’s been avoiding these last few days, is that he hasn’t missed it. It’s been hard not having the routine, and it hurts to know that he’s disappointed his family, but he doesn’t miss the fighting, or trying to prove to Martyn that he's capable, or having to report to his dad every time he calls. 

Phil ducks his head and continues to fold his napkin into various shapes. “I didn’t realise how heavy it was until I wasn’t doing it anymore.”

“So... if you don’t miss it and never really liked it in the first place, why did you put up such a fight over turning? I get that it puts you in a hard spot with your family but, honestly, it never really sounded like you got along with them anyway.”

The napkin is thinning where Phil keeps creasing the folds. “We loved each other, though. My parents just wanted us to be strong. They knew how dangerous it was going to be. They taught us everything they knew.”

Dan’s face twists. “How to hate?”

“Vampires hurt people.”

“ _ People _ hurt people.”

“And there are police for that. Hunters are just the same.”

“The police are usually going after people who deserve it. Hunters are going around tracking down and killing vampires who might never have killed anyone in their lives.”

“There’s still the chance that one day they’ll kill someone!”

“You could say that about everyone who drives to work every day! No one’s locking all of them up, though, are they? You can’t decide someone is guilty of a crime they might commit one day.”

Part of the problem is that Phil knows Dan is right. He can’t argue with the logic and Phil himself is proof that vampires don’t have to kill if they don’t want to.

“All I’m saying is that that’s what Martyn and I were told when we were growing up. It’s what my parents were told, too.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“I know.” The napkin is just about shredded now. “Actually, spending so much time with you these last couple of months made me realise that maybe not everything I thought I knew was accurate. You seem so normal.”

Dan snorts. “Gee, thanks.”

Phil rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. You watch TV and walk around in your socks and drink coffee. And sometimes you drink blood. I thought you were killing people because that’s what I was told. I know better now.”

They fall silent as their food is brought to their table. Phil takes a chip from the plate between them as Dan picks the seeds off his bun.

“Did you really not know about me?” Dan says, glancing up to meet his eyes. “About me being the leader of the clan? That was really all just a coincidence?”

Phil nods, biting into another chip thoughtfully. Taste seems to be his only sense that’s been dulled, but maybe it’s just human food, because the blood was the most vibrant thing he’s ever tasted. The food isn’t bad; it’s just less than it was before.

“It really was. Lucky, isn’t it? If I’d known at the beginning I would have just staked you then.”

“You wouldn’t be a vampire, though. If you’d staked me, Ava would have died too and none of this would have happened.”

That makes Phil pause. It’s an odd thing to weigh up. If he’d staked Dan, he would still have his life and his family exactly as it had been before. He’s lost all that but he’s here eating burgers and chips with Dan instead. Quietly, he knows which he prefers but he’s still expecting Dan to give him the boot as soon as he decides Phil knows enough to go it alone, so he keeps it to himself. Hearing Ava’s name makes him think of something else, though.

“Why were you at the factory that night?” With one finger, Phil wipes up a bit of sauce that’s dripped onto his plate and sucks it into his mouth. “Were you part of the ambush?”

Knowing now that Dan’s the leader of such a large clan, it seems stupid to let him into a fight against three hunters, even with all those vampires to back him up. If the ambush had been Dan’s idea, Phil can’t really be angry about it, because it’s not like Dan was expecting Phil to be there, but he still wants to know.

Dan shakes his head, cheeks chipmunk-round with the mouthful he’s chewing. Phil’s lips quirk into a smile that he hides with a bite of his own. When Dan swallows, he says, “No, that was all Ava’s idea. I didn’t even know she was going to do it.” Dan cocks his head. “Well, no, that’s not exactly true. She’d mentioned she wanted to take the fight to the hunters for a change, but she didn’t tell me any of the details. I definitely wasn’t expecting her to be there.”

“So... you were just walking through the neighbourhood?”

Dan shrugs, but there’s something self-conscious about it. “Kind of. I was out and saw you walking down the street when you’d already told me you were sick and staying in bed. I followed you.”

“All the way to the factory?”

“Yeah. I mean, the further we got from London the more suspicious it seemed. I was—” He clears his throat and ducks his head to mumble to his plate, “I was worried about you. I thought your brother might have gotten you involved in something dangerous.”

Phil’s mouth twitches into a smile before he can stop it. “You were worried about me?”

Dan rolls his eyes and stuffs another bite of burger into this mouth. Around his furious chewing he says, “Don’t be stupid. It’s nothing.”

Phil hums and exaggerates a nod. On the outside he’s amused, but his stomach is fluttering. Knowing that Dan was worried about him is nice. Phil tries not to think about how he might not be anymore, now that Dan knows Phil’s the kind of person who would lie to him. 

Phil cocks his head. “One thing I don’t understand is how we got away. Or how Martyn and Cornelia got away, I guess. When I woke up everyone was gone, even the vampires.”

“I made the vampires leave. Once they were gone, Martyn and Cornelia could leave, too.”

“How? Do they have to do what you say because you’re the leader?”

Dan snorts. “I wish. No, I threatened to stake myself.”

Phil goes cold. The last bit of burger he’d been chewing sits on his tongue, lumpy and tasteless. He forces himself to swallow it down. “What?”

Dan shrugs like it’s nothing and wipes a smear of sauce off his plate with one of the last chips. “They were all still bonded to me and I figured none of them would want to die, so I threatened myself to make them stop fighting and leave. There was no way Martyn and Cornelia were going to get through all those vampires and you were already in transition, so I knew I needed to find you someone to drink from when you woke up. That was the easiest way to get everyone out alive. Apart from you, I guess.”

The earlier fluttering in his stomach is nothing compared to this. 

“You would have staked yourself for us? For me?”

Dan winces and his gaze darts away. “Well... no. It was a bluff. But I was 90 percent sure the vampires didn’t want to die either. Ninety-five, even!”

It feels like they hang, suspended, for the longest moment, and then a laugh bursts out of Phil. Dan’s mouth quirks into a smile and then he laughs too. He looks even younger than he already does when he laughs. 

“How old are you?” Phil asks.

“Rude. I’m only 225.”

Phil’s eyes almost pop out of his skull and his jaw drops. “Wow. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Dan shrugs easily. “You’ll get there. You have to. Who else is going to keep me company?”

Phil’s brow furrows. “You want me to stick around?”

Dan eyes him, tapping the tip of one finger on the edge of his plate, and Phil holds his breath. He wants Dan to want him to stay so badly it almost knocks him over.

The corner of Dan’s mouth tips into a smile. “Sure. Why? Were you planning on going somewhere?”

“I just thought you’d want to get rid of me as soon as possible. I know you’re angry.”

Dan hesitates. “It hurts to know I was building this friendship with you when you were just using me. But I understand why you did it and I like having you around. I’ve never had many friends, but you make me laugh. I always want to hear what you’re thinking. Besides, I can’t really blame you for acting in your own interests. I’m hardly perfect.” He huffs a bitter laugh. “Actually, I’m just about as far from perfect as you can get.”

It’s on the tip of Phil’s tongue to tell him that he likes Dan just the way he is, but it feels too honest so he fights it back. Instead, he says, “I’m sorry I lied and that I made assumptions, but just so you know, everything I ever said that mattered, about me and my family and how I grew up—that was all true. I never lied about the important stuff. I like having you around, too. I’ve never had a friend like you before.”

Dan’s face softens into a smile and the fluttering in Phil’s stomach intensifies at the dimple winking from Dan’s cheek. He never knew he liked dimples so much. Maybe he doesn’t; maybe it’s just Dan’s dimples in particular.

“I guess you can stay then,” Dan says.

A grin spreads across Phil’s face, one of the dorky ones he’s always tried to temper because they’re too goofy for his serious vampire-hunter face. 

Phil nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

* * *

Martyn feels his dad’s gaze burning on him everywhere he goes these days. Whether it’s early afternoon at headquarters for a briefing, or pre-dawn after a hunt, his dad is always around. Every morning, when Martyn comes in after a night out, his dad asks him if he’s found out anything about Dan and every morning Martyn says no. There’s an underground community of humans who know vampires exist and have sought them out, and some are willing to share information and gossip for the right price. Martyn’s asked around but he’s never really been the one doing the research—that falls to someone else at headquarters. When they hand him the information, all he has to do is act on it. He has contacts floating around the city, but if they know anything, they’re not talking.

What he really needs to do is find that female vampire who ambushed them at the factory. There’s clearly some history between her and Dan; she probably knows how to find him. It’s the getting her to hand him over that’s likely to be the problem. Most vampires are clan-oriented; they stick together to protect their leader and, consequently, themselves.

His mum cooks up a stir fry before he goes out that night. She’s never been the best cook—always a better baker—but Martyn’s happy to let her go for it if it keeps her occupied. She hasn’t shown the same drive for revenge that his dad has, but that doesn’t mean she’s not feeling the loss of her son just the same. If she’s cooking she’s not crying, and she can blame it on the onions if she does.

Cornelia’s been benched until her wrist is healed so she keeps his mum company while Martyn hunts and his dad is at headquarters. The fight seems to have gone out of her, too. She used to fidget with restless energy when she was on medical leave; now she drifts around the flat, silent and solemn. 

Does Phil realise the affect his loss has had on them all? Would it have been the same if it had been Martyn instead? Privately, Martyn thinks not. There’s always been something about Phil. Everyone loves him. He made himself tough and cold to keep up with the other hunters, but there’s a softness in him that Martyn’s never had.

“Be careful out there,” his mum says, as she and Cornelia see him off for the night. She jerks his coat straight and brushes it down, like he’s off to some fancy do and she’s trying to get non-existent lint off.

“I always am.”

Except for that time he led Phil and Cornelia into an abandoned factory and Phil didn’t make it out alive.

“Don’t take any risks,” she goes on, as if he didn’t speak at all. “You don’t have anyone watching your back right now. There’s no need to be a hero.”

He nods and brushes a kiss across her cheek to soften his pulling her hands away from him. His dad would tell him to do whatever was necessary, but she’s already lost one child this week—there’s no need for her to lose another.

She retreats to the lounge so Cornelia can say her goodbyes.

“Are you really looking for information about Dan?” she asks quietly, even though they can already hear his mum clanging pots and pans around in the kitchen as she starts cleaning up.

“I have to give Dad something. He won’t rest until he gets what he wants.”

“But you know what he’ll do!”

Martyn jerks his head in a nod. “He doesn’t really need me for any of this, though. He could ask other people to look into it if he got desperate. I think the only reason he hasn’t already is because he’s trying to keep what happened under wraps. He probably can’t bear the shame. One son turned, the other a failure. Nigel Lester’s not had a great week.”

The bitterness edging his voice almost chokes him. With everything that’s happened, the last thing he should be worried about is his dad’s shame, but it’s hard to put aside when Martyn’s the one who caused it.

She punches him in the arm. “Don’t talk like that! You’re not a failure! Maybe it makes me a traitor, but I’d rather Phil turned than dead for good. At least he can talk to us if he wants to.”

“He doesn’t, though, does he? Otherwise he would have called.”

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip. “Maybe he thinks you don’t want to talk to him. You’ve never had the easiest relationship.”

He clenches his mouth around a sigh and makes a show of checking his weapons so he doesn’t have to look at her. “We don’t have to talk about this right now. I have to go.”

Her shoulders slump but she doesn’t argue. “Fine. Be careful. We’ll see you later.”

They share a kiss and then he’s out the door, riding the lift down, standing on the street. The nights have turned icy and his breath blooms out of him with every exhale. Stuffing his hands in his coat pockets, he starts off down the street. He’s on patrol this week, keeping an eye on things in general instead of heading out for somewhere specific. He assumes it’s his dad’s doing, so he’ll have an excuse to wander the city and gather what information he can about Dan without drawing the attention of other hunters. He knows he should dig deeper to find more information but Cornelia’s right—he knows what his dad will do. Martyn’s already been responsible for Phil’s death once. Isn’t that enough?

It’s a quiet night as far as the vampire population goes. They don’t seem to be bothered much by the cold, but humans are, and if the humans aren’t out there’s little reason for the vampires to be. That just makes it more obvious when he rounds a corner and feels a presence at his back. It’s not right behind him but he knows it’s there, ingrained after 30 years of being taught to be aware of his surroundings.

He doesn’t alter his steady stride, doesn’t want to clue in whoever’s behind him that he’s aware of them, but he eases his hands from his pockets so he can reach for his stakes if he needs them. He continues on towards a secluded street, glancing up at the busted streetlight overhead just as something rushes by him. He pulls up short when the figure stops in front of him.

It’s her—the female vampire he’s been looking for. The fact that she’s here now indicates she’s been looking for him, too.

“Nice night,” she says, propping her weight on one leg.

“If you don’t mind the cold.” As much he knows she’s the best way to get to Dan, he has to remember that she’s a vampire—a vampire who was seconds away from tearing into Phil’s throat just a week ago. He’s not here to be friendly.

“I don’t miss it,” she says with a little laugh. “I’m Ava.”

He nods silently and she rolls her eyes.

“It’s going to be like that, is it? I’m not here to hurt you, you know.”

“Considering you ambushed us just last week, you’ll have to excuse my reluctance to trust you.”

She hums. “Fair enough. I’ve heard that you’re looking for Dan.”

“What if I am?”

She smirks. “We can help each other. You want Dan gone and so do I. We’re on the same side.”

His eyes narrow. “We’re not. We just want the same thing.”

“Good enough for me, so long as Dan dies.”

The words drip so casually from her lips that Martyn’s stomach rolls. Vampires have no moral compass, he knows that, but to know how easily they can turn on each other makes him uneasy. She and Dan must be part of the same clan, but if she’s so willing to help them kill him, what’s she likely to do to Martyn and his family?

He can’t turn her away, though, not when she’s the closest he’s come to getting the information his dad wants.

“Wait a second,” he says and pulls his phone from his pocket to call him.

The phone only rings twice before he answers. “Have you found something?”

Martyn eyes Ava warily. “Yes, but it involves working with one of them.”

He doesn’t have to stress the last word for his dad to know what “them” means. There has always only ever been one “them” in the Lester lexicon.

His dad falls into a heavy silence, only the soft inhale and exhale of his breathing audible down the line. Working with a vampire goes against everything they stand for, but there’s more at stake here than ethics.

“Bring it to Storage,” he finally says. “I’ll call your mother.”

They hang up and Martyn slips the phone back into his pocket. “We’re willing to hear what you have to say, but you have to come with me.”

Her weight shifts. “How do I know you’re not going to stake me the moment we get there?”

“How do I know you’re not going to make a meal out of me on the way? You want Dan dead, right? Well, this is how you get it. Take it or leave it.”

He turns and walks back up the street at an easy pace, though his heart is pounding. Nothing about this feels right and, for the first time he can remember, he hates this. He hates being out here in the cold and the dark, searching the shadows for monsters. He hates the part his dad is making him play in this plot as much as he hates knowing he owes it to Phil to play it. If not for Martyn’s arrogance, Phil would still be alive.

He doesn’t hear her gain on him but she appears in the corner of his eye, walking on the side closest to the road.

“I hope you wore comfy shoes,” he says, like he doesn’t care either way. “It’s a long walk.”

“I’ll manage.”

The trek takes them across the city towards the river. There’s a storage facility near the bank that hunters have used for years for situations just like this, when they want to deal with things that can’t be done at headquarters. There’s no way his dad is letting a vampire walk his halls and they obviously can’t take her to Martyn’s flat.

The entrance has been left ajar and Ava only hesitates for a moment before following him inside. Their feet tap on the concrete floor as they walk past the roller doors of individual storage units. At the far end of the facility there’s a light shining over one door that’s been rolled all the way up. When they arrive at it, Martyn sees his parents and Cornelia waiting inside, the unit otherwise empty.

Cornelia inhales sharply. “It’s her.”

His dad shoots a glance at her. “‘Her’?”

“She was there when—that night, in the factory.”

Ava inspects them all carefully. “Phil’s family, I presume?”

“How do you know his name?” his mum asks warily.

Ava shrugs carelessly. “I know a guy.”

“We’re not here to chat,” his dad says, stepping forward. “What do you want?”

“I want what we all want.” Ava leans one shoulder against a wall and crosses her arms over her chest. “Dan dead. We can help each other.”

“We don’t make deals with monsters.”

“Would you prefer to keep wandering around hoping he’ll fall into your lap? Because he won’t. He’s lived a long time and he’s not interested in giving people what they want. I can bring him to you and then you can do whatever you want with him. You should really take me up on the offer; there’s more to Dan than you know.”

“Tell us what you mean,” his dad demands, his hands curling into fists. “We’re not here to play your games.”

A smirk pulls at Ava’s mouth. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but Dan is the leader of the local clan. There are hundreds of vampires under him.”

Everything goes still. When he glances around the unit, Martyn sees that his dad’s eyes have lit up. Hundreds of vampires? Taken out in one fell swoop? The opportunity is too good to pass up. Still, something nags at him.

“You’re not part of his clan?” Martyn asks.

Ava curls a lock of hair around one fingertip. “Not anymore.”

Martyn purses his lips. She’s turned at least one person then. It’s not great news but hardly surprising. She’s clearly not selfless enough to offer her own life up for the greater good.

“And you have no loyalty to him whatsoever? You’re going to just hand him over to us? What’s in it for you?”

“Territory.” She says it like it’s that simple. “London is big, but with the size of Dan’s clan as it currently stands, I’m not sure it’s big enough for both of us.”

Martyn shakes his head as he tries to process this. “So what’s to stop you building a clan as big as his? Won’t we just be trading one horde of vampires for another?”

“Dan has grown his clan over centuries. You’ll be dead by the time I get to that point and by then it will be someone else’s problem.”

“That doesn’t mean we should set them up for it!”

“Look.” She pushes herself upright and meets his gaze head-on. “You want Dan dead, I’m guessing as revenge for him turning your brother. You kill him and you get that, plus every vampire in his clan off your plate. I’m willing to help you achieve that. I’ll bring him right to you. All you have to do is finish him off. Highly trained as you are, I’m sure the four of you can manage that.”

Martyn opens his mouth to question her more, but before he can speak, his dad says, “Deal.”

Martyn whirls to face him but he glares and the argument dies in Martyn’s throat. Cornelia’s mouth is pinched into a grim line and his mum’s troubled gaze is bouncing from her husband to Ava and back again.

Ava eases and nods politely. “Thank you. How soon can you be ready?”

“Give us 24 hours. Bring him here this time tomorrow.” 

His dad jerks his head at Martyn, who takes up the signal to see Ava out. He makes sure she’s well on her way before returning to his family.

“I thought we didn’t make deals with monsters,” he says, as soon as he’s standing in the doorway of the unit.

“We don’t, but if we get both vampires here tomorrow night we can take them out at the same time and not have to worry about either of them or their clans again. I agreed to kill the male. I never promised not to kill the female, too. It’ll still get what it wants. Everyone wins.”

Everyone except Phil, Martyn thinks as his gaze slides to Cornelia, who’s backed herself into a corner. If they do this, Phil will be dead.  _ Really _ dead. And Dan too, a small voice in the back of his head whispers. Dan, who risked his own life to save theirs in an action that goes against everything Martyn has been taught about vampires. Is it possible that they have more morals than he’s been led to believe? If they do, what other false assumptions has he been living with? Do his parents know they’re false or have they just gone along without question too? Did Phil know all along that Dan wasn’t so bad?

More importantly, is Martyn really going to let them both die for his own mistake?

* * *

Ava had never been one to call if she could just show up at his door instead, so Dan seeing her name on his phone would have been surprising anyway. But that was Before. Things are different now. He had expected never to hear from her again. Sure, they might cross paths on a night, but if they weren’t friends before, they definitely aren’t now.

Still, curiosity gets the better of him and he answers.

“Hello?” He draws the word out warily. Did she butt-dial him? Is that a thing people still do?

“Hi.” She’s as perky as ever. “How have you been?”

“Since you mutinied and ambushed three hunters against my wishes, resulting in a man’s death? Yeah, great. You?”

He can practically hear her eyeroll. “You’ve always been prone to dramatics. And anyway, Phil didn’t die in the end, did he? You turned him! Saved him, even! Now you get to keep him forever and ever, guilt free.”

He doesn’t have the patience for this. “Did you call for a reason?”

“It’s not right that we’re on the outs with each other. We’re vampires; we need to stick together. That’s how we’ve survived so long. Meet me somewhere and we can talk it over.”

“Can’t we just talk it over on the phone?”

“It’s more personal if we’re face to face. I don’t mean you any harm, Dan, and I want you to see that. I’m calling a truce.”

He’s surprised by how tempting it sounds. Ava’s clearly got the support of other vampires in the clan, if the numbers in the ambush are anything to go by. Making peace with her can only be good for the clan as a whole. They don’t need in-fighting on top of having the hunters after them, and it’ll be easier to talk the other vampires out of going after the hunters themselves if he has Ava’s support.

“Fine,” he says. “Where?”

She reels off an address. “It’s a storage facility by the river. You can’t miss it.”

“A storage facility? Are you planning to lock me up and throw away the key? Rule in my place?”

She scoffs. “Don’t be stupid. You know it doesn’t work like that. I’m out on the other side of the city, that’s all. This is roughly in the middle. I’ll see you there?”

“Yeah, alright. See you.”

They hang up and Dan sighs. This is not how he was planning for his night to go. Sure, he’d only had TV and video games and a call with Phil in his schedule, but it was supposed to be a night to de-stress. Now he’s got to put on real trousers, leave his flat and have peace talks with Ava.

_ Won’t be around until later. Got clan stuff to deal with _ , he texts to Phil and then wriggles into a pair of jeans.

_ Do you need any help? I can come with you. _

Dan grimaces, thinking about how well the last meeting between Phil and Ava had gone.  _ No thanks. Probably better if you don’t. _

_ Text me when you get in. _

A smile spreads across Dan’s face. It’s strange to have someone waiting up for him. Strange, but nice. It’s nicer knowing that it’s Phil in particular.

He lets himself out of his flat and rides the lift down thinking that he really has to deal with this Phil... situation. It sounds so dodgy thinking about it like that, but thinking about it as “my feelings for Phil” makes it sound huge and life-changing. Dan doesn’t  _ do _ feelings. He’s coasted through 200 years by caring as little for other people as possible. The last people he cared about were his family and look what happened to them! His attachment to Phil has already gotten Phil killed and turned.

But Phil wants to stay with him and Dan doesn’t want to push him away. Why can’t they spend the rest of eternity together? Dan doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of Phil’s stories or thoughts about things. It was that that made Dan ultimately decide to give Phil another chance. Sure, Phil had lied, but even after all that, Dan still wanted to be around him more than anyone. Being with Phil is easy; it feels like the release of tension after a long day. It’s just ironic that humans get married and vow to stay with their partner until death parts them, but it’s death that brought Dan and Phil together.

When Dan approaches the facility, Ava melts out of the shadows. It’s very vampiric of her; she really is a lot better at that stuff than him. They meet under the yellow glow of the light above the entrance.

“You actually came,” she says, sounding legitimately impressed.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like you often care enough to make an effort.”

“Maybe I’m trying something new.”

“Is that Phil’s influence?”

He chuckles, because his life has certainly changed since Phil wandered into it. “Could be.”

His phone buzzes insistently in his pocket but before he can reach for it, two pairs of hands wrap around his arms from behind. He jumps and stares over one shoulder and then the other at the vampires who’ve taken hold of him. He’s never seen them before but they’re broad and muscled, and they have that lively rosiness of the newly-turned. The buzzing of his phone cuts off; a minute later, it chirps with a text message.

“Friends of yours?” he asks Ava, trying to calm the nervous clenching in his stomach.

She smirks. “Something like that.”

The cold realisation that something isn’t right here steals over him. By creating her own vampires, Ava has cut the bond between them and started her own clan. His death will no longer result in hers. So why call him here? She’s obviously not interested in a truce.

She nudges the entrance of the facility open and sets off down the corridor. Dan stumbles as the vampires at his back propel him after her. His phone starts buzzing again. It must be Phil—he’s the only one who ever calls—and then comes the dawning horror: if Ava’s planning to kill him, Phil’s about to die and he doesn’t even know it.

Dan struggles, gets his right arm free and is just about to plunge his elbow back into the stomach of one of the vampires, when something hard and pointy digs into the left side of his chest. He knows it’s a stake before he glances down at it. 

“It’s best if you don’t put up a fight,” Ava says and leads them into one of the units where the two vampires shove him down onto a sturdy wooden chair. 

An older man Dan’s never seen before slings chains around his waist, wrists and neck, tying him down. Dan gasps at the burn of the silver against the bare skin of his throat and wrists.

“They wait outside,” the man says, jerking his head at Ava’s vampire minions.

She hesitates but then sends them off with a nod and the door rattles down behind them. 

Lights flick on and Dan blinks against the brightness. When his eyes clear, he’s surrounded. The older man is standing directly in front of him, flanked by Martyn and Cornelia. An older woman stands to the side beside Martyn and Ava lounges in the corner. These must be Phil’s parents—his brain makes the connection before he thinks about it consciously. That means he’s in serious trouble.

“You don’t want to do this,” he blurts, because there’s no point trying to get on their good side and he’s better off getting straight to the point.

“Don’t I?” Lester Senior’s fingers curl comfortably around the stake in his hand.

“If you kill me, Phil will die!”

Lester Senior’s mouth tightens. “He’s already dead,” he spits. “You saw to that. By killing you, I’m doing him a favour. He shouldn’t be chained to this cursed existence you chose for him. You’ve turned him into a monster.”

Dan’s mouth drops open. Is this what Phil’s been hearing all his life? Is this why he was so torn up about completing the transition? What kind of parent would rather see their child dead than live on as a vampire?

He shakes his head violently and turns desperately to Martyn. “You don’t believe this? Phil is your brother! He loves you! He’s supported you! All his life, all he’s wanted is to be like you and make you proud! You can’t let your father do this.”

Martyn swallows hard and glances at Cornelia, whose eyes are shiny with tears, then he turns to his father.

“Maybe we should think about this. We could—”

“No!” Lester Senior’s hand slices through the air to cut him off. “Don’t listen to it! It’s trying to get in your head. It doesn’t care about Phil. It’s just trying to save itself.”

“But he saved us!” Cornelia says. “And he saved Phil! Dan could have drained him or turned him weeks ago, but he never did. He only turned Phil because he was dying anyway.”

There’s a soft, sharp in-drawn breath from off to the side and Dan glances at the woman who has to be Phil’s mother. Her fingers are clenched around each other so tightly that her hands shake.

“Please,” Dan says to her. “I never meant for Phil to get hurt. I just didn’t want to lose him. In over 200 years, I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for your son. He makes me happy. He makes me feel less alone.”

Tears prick at his eyes and he instinctively tries to raise a hand to wipe them away, but gasps when the silver chain bites into his wrist.

Phil’s mother’s eyes soften and her fingers loosen. She turns to her husband. “Nigel…”

“Listen to all of you!” he snarls. “A few pleading words and you’ve all gone soft. This vampire has murdered hundreds of people—Phil is just the latest. You think it won’t do it again? And it’ll force Phil into it, too, if it hasn’t already. Is that really what you want?”

Martyn glances over and meets Dan’s eyes, and Dan feels any sliver of hope he had slipping away as Martyn’s mouth tightens.

The unit door slams up and they all turn to see Phil standing there like some kind of avenging angel. He’s dressed head to toe in hunter gear and he’s got a sure grip on a stake. The two vampires Ava had brought as backup are collapsed on the floor behind him, stakes in their hearts.

* * *

The inside of the storage unit is like something out of a B-grade thriller. His dad’s wild eyes, his mum’s desperation, Cornelia’s pleading, Martyn’s uncertainty and Dan chained to that chair, the flesh of his throat and wrists raw and bloody where the silver has eaten into it.

“What are you doing here?” There’s something in his dad’s voice that Phil’s never heard before. It’s a strange mix of horror and devastation.

“I texted him.” The corner of Cornelia’s mouth quirks up in what might have been a smile, if there were any joy in it. “He had a right to know you were planning to kill him.”

Phil had been all set for a quiet night in front of the telly when he’d received Cornelia’s message. He hadn’t spared a thought before racing to his wardrobe and yanking up the false bottom to get to his gear. He’d pulled on his clothes, strapped on his weapons and sprinted out of the building. When his calls to Dan had gone unanswered, he’d put on an extra burst of speed and almost felt like he was flying through the streets he was moving so fast. The people blurred around him but no one seemed to notice he was amongst them.

The only thought in his head was that he had to get to Dan. He couldn’t let them kill him. A world without Dan in it is a world devoid of laughter and sunshine and happiness, he had realised as he ran. The thought that Phil himself might have once killed Dan makes him sick to his stomach. Dan has never been anything but friendly and open with him. Even when he had reason to be angry, he had still helped him. Dan would never have abandoned him, and Phil isn’t going to abandon him now. If they’re going to die tonight, they’re going to do it together, but Phil’s going to do everything he can to make sure it doesn’t come to that. They can kill Phil if they want to, but they aren’t going to kill Dan. At least if Dan escapes Phil can die knowing that Dan is still somewhere in the world.

“That thing,” his dad points the stake at Dan as he whirls to Cornelia, “is a monster. It has killed innocent people.”

“Kind of like we do, you mean?” Her face is red with fury. “Look at us!” She flings her arms out to encompass the unit they’re sequestered in. “We’ve lured him and trapped him here to kill him. He saved my life. He saved your sons’ lives. Maybe he’s done bad things, but you aren’t punishing him for that—you just want revenge. We’re the monsters here, not him.”

“Cornelia’s right,” Martyn says and the air seems to go out of the room. “This is wrong. If you want to punish someone for what happened to Phil, punish me. I’m the one who shot him. I’m to blame.”

Phil frowns. “What?”

Martyn meets his gaze. It’s only then that Phil notices the rounded slump of his shoulders. “It’s all my fault this happened. I was arrogant. I should have made sure we had backup. And I panicked. That’s why you got shot. I’m so sorry.”

Phil’s heart clenches. He wants to say that it’s okay, that Martyn didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s not, and he did. That doesn’t mean he wants Martyn to suffer, though. “I forgive you. This has actually been good for me. I hated being a hunter. I hated having to be so hard and cold all the time. I was so unhappy, but I don’t feel like that anymore.”

His mum steps up to stand at Martyn’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want to let you and Dad down.”

Her face crumples but then she sets her mouth and grabs the stake from her husband’s hand. “We’re not doing this.”

“You’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you’ve condemned him to a vampiric existence?” His dad is pale with shock and there’s a desperate edge to his voice.

“I’ll sleep at night knowing he’s out in the world with someone who loves him.” She glares. “And I don’t know how you think I could ever look at you again if you kill him.”

Time seems to shudder to a halt as his mum’s words register. “‘Someone who loves him’,” she had said. Who? Not Dan, surely? His gaze jumps to Dan who blushes and slides his eyes away.

Phil’s stomach flips and then warmth infuses him. He’s had enough of this. He’s getting out of here and he’s taking Dan with him. 

Phil straightens his shoulders and marches across the room to plant himself in front of Dan’s chair and look his dad square in the eyes. “If you want to ‘free me’ from this, you look me in the eyes and do it yourself. You don’t get to just stake Dan and be done with it.”

It’s that that fractures him. Phil sees it in the creases around his eyes and the downturn of his mouth.

“I know you don’t want this for me.” Phil keeps his voice gentle, like he’s trying to soothe a tormented animal. “I know you think vampires are evil and that we all kill people to survive, but it’s not true. Dan hasn’t killed anyone, and neither have I.”

“It killed  _ you _ .”

Phil shakes his head. “He brought me back to life.”

He drops his face into his hands and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. Phil feels unbearably young. His dad loves him. He wouldn’t care so much if he didn’t.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” his dad’s voice is muffled.

“It’s better this way. Maybe now I can figure out what  _ I  _ want instead of just trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations.”

An impatient sigh comes from the corner of the room and they all turn to see Ava, arms folded across her chest and a scowl on her face.

“This is all very touching, but have you forgotten that Dan is the leader of a clan that numbers in the hundreds? Or does that not matter anymore?”

“No one asked you,” Martyn says. “Besides, we can handle it.”

Her mouth tightens. “Or I can just take care of it myself.”

She bursts into action, moving so fast the humans can’t see her—his mum gasps when the stake she’s holding is snatched from her hands—but Phil follows her every move. Just before Ava can duck around him to get to Dan, Phil catches her around the waist and drives her into a wall. 

She thrusts the stake towards his face but he dodges so that only the tip rakes down his cheek. He gasps at the burn of it and she uses his moment of distraction to flip them and trap him against the wall instead, but as she moves he lodges a foot between her ankles and she stumbles. He goes down with her, straddles her waist and drives a stake so deeply into her heart he feels the tip press against the floor at her back. Her eyes have just enough time to widen before she turns grey and falls back.

Phil’s breathing is loud in the sudden silence and he slumps to the side to sit heavily on the floor.

“Nicely done,” Martyn says and Phil grins up at him.

“Thanks.”

“So…” Dan glances around at each of them in turn. “Are you going to let us go?”

“Yes,” his mum says and doesn’t wait for anyone to protest before she rounds the chair and unties the chains.

Phil pushes himself to his feet to help Dan out of the chair. His hands hover over the burns left by the silver. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” His gaze catches on Ava and he grimaces. “Sorry about her. I never thought she’d cause so much trouble.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

Dan laughs. “I guess not. She was no match for you, the vampire-hunting vampire.”

“You’d be unstoppable,” Martyn says. “With your vampire speed and resilience, and your hunter training, vampires won’t stand a chance against you.”

“I’m not interested.” He smirks. “And I wouldn’t want to put you out of a job.”

Martyn rolls his eyes but a smile pulls at his mouth.

The levity and relief only make him more aware of heaviness emanating from his dad, who’s stood back from the rest of them. Phil doesn’t want to linger for it to become awkward or give them a chance to reconsider.

“We’d better go,” he says. “We’ve all had enough excitement for one night.”

Cornelia stands on her toes and throws her arms around him as high as she can reach before he bends to hug her back.

“Thank you,” he whispers into her ear and she nods against his shoulder.

Martyn hugs him next, a strong arm around his shoulders that takes Phil back to his first day of primary school, when he’d been so small and scared but so certain that nothing bad would happen to him because Martyn was there.

“We’ll have you both over for dinner,” Martyn says and then pauses, leaning back to frown into his face. “Do you still eat or…?”

“Yes, I still eat.” His voice carries the same weary patience his mum’s did when they were kids, when she’d had to answer questions she probably never expected to hear in the first place.

“Great!” Martyn claps him on the shoulder. “We’ll call and set something up.”

His mum takes Martyn’s place and Phil holds his breath waiting for the moment she hesitates to reach for him, but it doesn’t happen. Her cool palms close around his cheeks like they always have and move up to brush his fringe out of his eyes so she can better see his face.

“You’ve never let us down.  _ We _ let  _ you _ down and I’m sorry. I’m so proud of you, Phil.”

Tears prick at the backs of his eyes and he tries to fight them down but he knows she sees them. He wraps his arms around her and rests his cheek on the top of her head. After a long moment, she leans back and presses a kiss to the side of his face.

“I love you,” she says, the words so simple but the last thing he expected to hear from her ever again.

“I love you, too.”

She sniffs and nods briskly. “You’ll call at least twice a week, the same as always. This doesn’t give you an excuse to just disappear, understand? I’ll worry.”

He chuckles wetly and nods. “Yes, Mum.”

She looks towards Dan, who’s loitering by the door. “You make sure you’re around when Phil calls. I’ll want to speak to you, too.”

Dan’s eyebrows jump up his forehead. “Really?”

“Of course. How are we supposed to get to know each other if we don’t talk?”

He nods slowly, shooting a glance at Phil. “Okay. I’ll be around.”

“Good. Off you two go now. We’ll deal with this mess.” She waves a hand at Ava and her vampire minions. “They’re hunter responsibility now.”

Phil steps over Ava’s legs to meet Dan at the door but he hesitates at the threshold before he looks over his shoulder at his dad. 

“Bye.”

There’s a long moment where his gaze tracks over Phil’s face, like he’s committing it to memory, and then he nods, once, deeply, and Phil turns away.

His dad didn’t say goodbye, he thinks, as he and Dan walk back down the hallway towards the entrance, but the Lesters never do. They never need to, because the Lesters always know they’ll see each other again.

A small smile graces his face as he and Dan step outside and breathe in the brisk November air.

“How did you know your dad wouldn’t actually kill you?” Dan asks, turning them to follow the river east.

“I didn’t, but I hoped. He’s still my dad after all.”

Dan shakes his head in quiet disbelief. “You take a lot on faith.”

“We have to believe in something. It might as well be family.”

“My family was never like that.”

“Well it sounds like you’ve got mine now. Now that Martyn’s offered, Cornelia’s going to have us ‘round for dinner at least once a week, and once Mum starts talking to you she’ll be calling every other day.”

Phil glances down at Dan’s hands, how he’s holding them out in front of him awkwardly so his wrists don’t rub against his sleeves. Part of him is too scared to reach out but another, bigger, part of him thinks that if he doesn’t do it now he never will. So he stops Dan with a touch to his elbow and clasps Dan’s fingers between his own. He brings Dan’s hands up between them and blows a gentle breath across the burns.

Dan’s breath stutters. “What are you doing?”

Phil shrugs. It feels like everything around them has melted away. There is no world outside the one he can see in Dan’s eyes.

“I want to make you feel better.”

“I thought it was kisses that made things feel better.”

Their voices are hushed, spilling words between them that no one else will ever know.

Phil runs a careful eye over Dan’s face. When Dan meets his gaze steadily, Phil leans in and brushes a chaste kiss across Dan’s lips.

It only lasts for a second but it feels momentous, like something written in stone at the dawn of time finally clicking into place.

After just one taste, Phil wants to go back in for more but he pulls back and treasures Dan’s self-conscious little laugh.

“Did it work?” Phil asks.

“Like magic. Nothing hurts anymore.” Dan hesitates and then says, “So are we... you know?” 

Phil’s brow furrows. “Are we what?”

Dan pulls his hands away to gesture with them, a kind of stirring up the air that he probably thinks means something. “You know!”

Phil takes in the flush of his cheeks and the way he avoids Phil’s gaze. “Like... vampire boyfriends?”

Dan heaves a sigh. “You make it sound so quaint. This isn’t a Twilight novel, Phil.”

“What’s wrong with quaint? Quaint is cute!”

Dan's face is suddenly serious. “I waited more than 200 years to find you. Until I met you, I actually thought I was going to be alone forever. Literally.”

The thought of Dan lonely and alone for that long makes Phil’s heart ache. He wants to spend the rest of his life making sure Dan never feels that way again.

“You’re not going to be alone forever. We’re…” He smirks. “ _ You know _ .”

A grin blooms across Dan’s face and Phil can’t help but match it. He wants to see Dan grin like that every day until the end of time.

They turn to continue walking back along the river. The sounds of London are steady and familiar. What will it sound like in 50 years? Or in a hundred? Do cities in Australia and Brazil sound like this?

“We should go somewhere,” Phil says and, from the corner of his eye, sees Dan turn to look at him. “Would that be a problem for you? With the clan?”

“No. It’s not like they’re used to dealing with me every day. I’ll just let them know I’ll be away.”

“How will you do that? Aren’t there hundreds of them?

“There’s a group text. And a phone tree.”

A laugh bursts out of Phil. “What? Really? Why aren’t I in it?”

A smile fights its way onto Dan’s face. “Because I text you directly.”

Phil’s stomach flutters. “Then let’s go somewhere.”

“Anywhere in particular? Or were you thinking... I don’t know... Plymouth?”

“Japan.” Phil’s never given much thought to where he’d travel because he always assumed the hunters wouldn’t let him go long enough to go anywhere exciting, but Japan feels right. “Have you been there before?”

“A couple of times.”

“Then you can show me around!”

“And teach you to use chopsticks.”

Phil holds up a hand. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“You can wield a stake like it’s an extension of your body, but you can’t use chopsticks. It’s not right, Phil.”

“That’s not even nearly the same!”

They continue arguing as the night swallows them up.

**Author's Note:**

> You can reblog this fic on tumblr [here](https://andthenshesaid-write.tumblr.com/post/624505733707350016/lonely-in-conflict-cast-as-a-convict).


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